Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy switched into Russian in his nightly video address to urge Russian soldiers not to fight in Ukraine, saying even their generals expected that thousands of them would die.
He said Russia has been recruiting new troops “with little motivation and little combat experience” for the units that were gutted during the early weeks of the war so these units can be thrown back into battle.
He said Russian commanders fully understand that thousands of them will die and thousands more will be wounded in the coming weeks.
“The Russian commanders are lying to their soldiers when they tell them they can expect to be held seriously responsible for refusing to fight and then also don’t tell them, for example, that the Russian army is preparing additional refrigerator trucks for storing the bodies. They don’t tell them about the new losses the generals expect,” Zelenskyy said late Saturday.
“Évery Russian soldier can still save his own life. It’s better for you to survive in Russia than to perish on our land,” he said.
____
Sweden says a Russian military plane has violated Swedish airspace.
The incident happened late Friday in the Baltic Sea near the island of Bornholm.
In a statement Saturday, the Swedish Armed Forces said a Russian AN-30 propeller plane flew toward Swedish airspace and briefly entered it before leaving the area.
The Swedish Air Force scrambled fighter jets which photographed the Russian plane.
Swedish Defense Minister Peter Hultqvist told Swedish public radio that the violation was “unacceptable” and “unprofessional.”
In a similar incident in early March four Russian warplanes violated Swedish airspace over the Baltic Sea.
Sweden and neighboring Finland are both considering NATO membership following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Moscow has warned that such a move would have consequences, without giving specifics.
___
Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson discussed the progress of the U.N. effort to evacuate people from the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol and “offered the U.K.‘s continued economic and humanitarian support” during a talk Saturday with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskky.
“The prime minister reiterated that he is more committed than ever to reinforcing Ukraine and ensuring (Russian President Vladimir) Putin fails, noting how hard the Ukrainians are fighting for their freedom,’’ Johnson’s Downing Street office said.
“He confirmed that the UK will continue to provide additional military aid to give the Ukrainians the equipment they needed to defend themselves,” the statement said.
The United Nations has been attempting to broker an evacuation in the port city where some 100,000 civilians remain. Up to 1,000 civilians are living beneath a Soviet-era steel plant in Mariupol, according to Ukrainian officials.
Ukraine has not said how many fighters are also in the plant, but the Russians put the number at about 2,000.
___
A Russian rocket attack destroyed an airport runway in Odesa, Ukraine’s third-largest city and a key Black Sea port, the Ukrainian army said Saturday.
In a Telegram post, Ukraine’s Operational Command South said there was no way that the Odesa runway could be used as a result of the rocket attack.
Local authorities urged residents of the area to shelter in place as Ukrainian news agency UNIAN, citing army sources, reported that “several” explosions were heard in Odesa.
Odesa’s regional governor said that the rocket was fired from Russian-occupied Crimea. Maksym Marchenko said there were no reports of any injuries.
Russian forces have embarked on a major military operation to seize significant parts of southern and eastern Ukraine, the country’s industrial heartland, and capture the country’s Black Sea and Sea of Azov coasts.
___
Ukraine’s national grid operator says it has has restored “reliable” power supply in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, around the site of the 1986 nuclear reactor disaster.
“In the afternoon, the last necessary 330 kV power transmission line was put into operation,” the state-owned Ukrenergo wrote in a Telegram post Saturday.
According to the same post, Ukrenergo also restored another 330 kV line in the northern Kyiv region last night, helping stabilize the energy supply in the capital. It said the reconstruction of further transmission lines in and around Kyiv remains underway.
___
The mayor of the eastern Ukrainian town of Popasna said in a video interview that two buses headed to the town to evacuate residents had been fired upon and that contact with the drivers had been lost.
“Yesterday we evacuated 31 people from Popasna. Many more people were waiting; for that reason we dispatched two more buses to the evacuation point,” Mayor Mykola Khanatov said in an interview posted on the Telegram channel of Serhiy Haidai, the Ukrainian governor of the eastern Luhansk region.
“We know that (the buses) reached the town and then came under fire from an enemy sabotage and reconnaissance group,” Khanatov said. ”There is no contact with people who were inside the vehicles and were organizing the evacuation.”
Russian forces have embarked on a major military operation to seize significant parts of southern and eastern Ukraine, the country’s industrial heartland.
___
Another mass grave has been found in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha, the scene of alleged mass executions of civilians before its recapture by Ukrainian forces in early March, the head of Kyiv’s regional police force said Saturday.
“On April 29, a pit with the bodies of three men was found in the Bucha district,” regional police chief Andriy Nebytov wrote on Facebook. “The victims were tortured for a lengthy period of time. Bullet wounds were found on the extremities of their bodies. In the end, each of the men was shot through the ear.”
“This is another mass burial made by the occupiers in the Bucha district, the long-suffering district where more than a thousand civilians have been killed and tortured,” Nebytov added.
According to Nebytov’s post, the burial site was found in the forest near the village of Myrotske, 10 kilometers (6 miles) northwest of the town of Bucha. Nebytov said the three bodies were being sent for a forensic examination, following a preliminary inspection by the Kyiv regional police.
___
Seven Ukrainian soldiers and seven civilians have been released in a prisoner swap Saturday with Russia, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said on social media.
“We’re bringing home 14 of our people: seven military personnel and seven civilians,“ Vereshchuk wrote on Facebook and Telegram. “To me, this exchange is special: one of the female soldiers is five months pregnant.”
As of Saturday afternoon, the swap had not been confirmed by official Russian sources.
___
Prices for Russian credit default swaps — insurance contracts that protect an investor against a default — plunged sharply overnight after Moscow used its precious foreign currency reserves to make a last-minute debt payment on Friday.
The cost for a five-year credit default swap on Russian debt was $5.84 million to protect $10 million in debt. That price was just about half the price on Thursday, which at roughly $11 million for $10 million in debt protection was a signal that investors were certain of a Russian default.
Despite the insurance contract plunge, investors remain largely convinced that Russia will eventually default on its debts for the first time since 1917.
The major ratings agencies Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s have declared Russia is in “selective default” on its obligations and earlier this week, the governing body over CDS contracts declared Russia in default.
___
Ukraine evacuated more people Saturday in the eastern town of Lyman in the fiercely fought-over region of Donetsk, where at least half the residents have fled Russian shelling since the start of the war.
About 20 mostly elderly people boarded a minivan amid the sounds of outgoing artillery and explosions in the distance. All the shops in the almost-empty town were closed and those who decided to remain rely on aid distributed by groups including the Ukrainian Red Cross.
Those who remain say they are either too old, don’t know where to go or don’t want to leave their homes unattended. They seek shelter in their basements whenever the shelling starts.
Meanwhile, in Dobropillya, further to the west, Russian shelling hit the town on Saturday, damaging buildings and slightly injuring seven people including three children, according to authorities.
Ukraine’s deputy agriculture minister says Russian forces are seizing vast amounts of grain in territory they hold, while its president says the war-torn country is facing fuel shortages.
“Today, there are confirmed facts that several hundred thousand tons of grain in total were taken out of the Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Donetsk and Luhansk regions,” minister Taras Vysotsky told Ukrainian television on Saturday.
Ukraine is one of the world’s major grain producers and the Russian invasion has curtailed exports, pushing up world grain prices and raising concerns about severe grain shortages in importing countries.
Ukraine is also facing fuel shortages as Russia destroys its fuel infrastructure and blocks its ports, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Friday night.
Fuel shortages have been reported in Kyiv, Dnipro and other cities. Vehicles can be seen lining up at gas stations and drivers in most places can purchase only 10 liters (2.6 gallons) of fuel at a time.
Zelenskyy promised that officials would find a fuel supply system within a week or two to prevent a deficit but called it a “difficult task” after the refinery at Kremenchuk was hit by a Russian missile.
But, Zelenskyy said, “there are no immediate solutions.”
___
French President Emmanuel Macron has conveyed to Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy his “wish to actively work to re-establish the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine during his second mandate,” in coordination with allies, the presidential Elysee Palace says.
Macron assured Zelenskyy in their hourlong conversation Saturday that “military material” and humanitarian assistance would keep flowing to Ukraine, the Elysee said.
France has so far sent 615 tons of equipment and aid, including generators for hospitals, ambulances and food. France has been coy about its contribution in defensive weapons, but Macron recently mentioned Milan anti-tank missiles and a delivery of truck-mounted Caesar cannons among “consequential equipment.”
“This support will continue to strengthen,” the French president told Zelenskyy, according to the Elysee.
Macron was re-elected president of France six days ago. During his first term, Macron held numerous conversations with both Zelenskyy and Russian leader Vladimir Putin since Russia’s invasion Feb. 24.
___
Russia’s foreign minister says Moscow has evacuated over 1 million people from Ukraine since the war there began.
The comments Saturday by Sergey Lavrov in an interview with Chinese state news agency Xinhua come as Ukraine has accused Moscow of forcefully sending Ukrainians out of the country. Lavrov said that figure included more than 300 Chinese civilians.
Lavrov offered no evidence to support his claim in the interview.
Lavrov also said that negotiations continue between Russia and Ukraine “almost every day.” However, he cautioned that “progress has not been easy.”
Lavrov in part blamed “the bellicose rhetoric and inflammatory actions of Western supporters of the Kyiv regime” for disrupting the talks. However, Russian state TV nightly has had guests who suggest that Moscow use nuclear weapons in the conflict.
AP
