WAR IN UKRAINE: April 25, 2022
Churchgoers lighting candles on Easter Sunday in Lviv. M. Bociurkiw
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS: Day 60
Russian shelling continues in the east, with civilian deaths reported in north-eastern Kharkiv and eastern Donetsk, according to regional officials Russia is planning a staged referendum in the southern city of Kherson aimed at justifying its occupation, according to UK defence intelligence - BBC. Separately, attacks have taken place in the last hours on the country’s railway infrastructure resulting in the delays of many trains, said the head of Ukrzaliznytsia quoted on Ukrainian television.
Four Ukraine members of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)’s Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine have been detained in Russian-occupied Donetsk and Luhansk. The Polish chairman in office Rau Zbigniew & OSCE SG Helga Schmid called the act “unacceptable” and “for their immediate release.” The OSCE recently wound down its mission in Ukraine after Russia, a member state, refused to support the extension of the mandate. The detained members, who’ve been detained for a period of time, were working in an administrative capacity.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres “will be received by President Vladimir Putin” on Tuesday in Moscow, after having a working meeting and lunch with the foreign minister of Russia, the UN said. He is also expected to meet President Zelensky on Thursday in Ukraine, according to a UN spokesperson - CNN. Zelensky criticized Mr. Guterres’s decision to visit Russia first. “The war is in Ukraine, there are no bodies in the streets of Moscow,” he said. Since the start of the war, the UN has been criticized for its toothless stance - including by me - and for a slow response.
Russia has forcibly deported Mariupol citizens to Primorsky Krai in Russia's Far East region, according to the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights. Lyudmyla Denisova said volunteers told her a train arrived in the city of Nakhodka on April 21 with 308 Ukrainians from Mariupol, including mothers with young children, people with disabilities and students - CNN.
Separately, Russia claims almost one million Ukrainians have been “evacuated” to Russia since the start of its so-called special military operation. The Russian Defense Ministry, quoted by Interfax, reported that since the start of a full-scale invasion, 951,000 Ukrainians had been forcibly deported to Russia from occupied Ukrainian territories, including those taken before Feb. 24. This number reportedly includes 174,689 children. An official from the National Defense Control Center of the Russian Federation said “in total, there are 2,752,552 people from 2,129 settlements in Ukraine in the database of those wishing to leave for the Russian Federation.” In a press conference Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said up to half-a-million people had been forcibly departed to Russia, including 5,000 children. The comments by the Russian official suggest that hundreds of thousands of more Ukrainians face forced deportation to Russia.
At least 215 Ukrainian children have been killed and more than 391 injured in Russia's attack on Ukraine, said the country’s Prosecutor General's Office on Telegram
Five weeks after the beginning of the war, the Russians retreated from Kyiv, Chernihiv, and the north of Ukraine. Now, with every passing day, we learn more about the Russian terror—the murders, summary executions, and looting in the territories they occupied. The New York Review has published an eyewitness account of the horror of the first weeks of the Russian invasion from the North, as seen through the eyes of a Jewish-American intellectual, one who has a long association with Ukraine. By Tim Judah, read here