Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has described Russian missile attacks on Kyiv during UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ visit as a “deliberate and brutal humiliation” that was “left without a powerful response”.

The dismantlement of debris in Kyiv, where Russian missiles hit on Thursday continues, he said in his latest national address late on Friday.

Unfortunately, such a deliberate and brutal humiliation of the United Nations by Russia was left without a powerful response.”

Zelenskyy continued to provide an operational update as to Russia’s advances, describing the city of Mariupol as a “Russian concentration camp in the middle of ruins”.

The city, which was one of the most developed in the region, is simply a Russian concentration camp in the middle of ruins. And the order of the occupiers in that part of Mariupol which they unfortunately still control differs insignificantly from what the Nazis did in the occupied territory of Eastern Europe.

But the Russian troops manage to be even more cynical than the Nazis 80 years ago. At that time, the invaders did not say that it was the Mariupol residents and the defenders of the city who shelled and killed themselves.”

Fighting In Kharkiv Region Is Tough

The situation in the Kharkiv region is tough. But our military, our intelligence, have important tactical success.

In Donbas, the occupiers are doing everything to destroy any life in this area. Constant brutal bombings, constant Russian strikes at infrastructure and residential areas show that Russia wants to make this area uninhabited. “

Describing the situation in the temporarily occupied areas of the Kherson region, Zelenskiy said Russian forces are allegedly preparing for the transition to the “ruble zone”.

“Any attempt to transfer our territory to Russia’s administrative, monetary, or any other system will mean only one thing: Russia itself will suffer from that,” he said. “Our responses, sanctions and other reactions of the free world to Russia’s aggressive actions will not be delayed.”

US Military Aid En Route To Ukraine

Shipments of new US military aid are en route to Ukraine after President Joe Biden asked Congress on Thursday for $33bn to bolster Ukraine’s fight against Russia.

In the images below, airmen and women with the 436th Aerial Port Squadron place 155mm shells, fused and helmets on aircraft pallets ultimately bound for Ukraine on a C-17 cargo aircraft on Friday at Dover Air Force Base, Delaware.

Zelenskyy “Big Risk That Peace Talks With Moscow Would End

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said there is a big risk that peace talks with Moscow would end and blamed public anger over what he said were atrocities by Russian troops.

“People [Ukrainians] want to kill them. When that kind of attitude exists, it’s hard to talk about things,” Interfax news agency quoted the president as telling Polish journalists.

Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has described Russian missile attacks on Kyiv during UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ visit as a “deliberate and brutal humiliation” that was “left without a powerful response”.

The dismantlement of debris in Kyiv, where Russian missiles hit on Thursday continues, he said in his latest national address late on Friday.

Unfortunately, such a deliberate and brutal humiliation of the United Nations by Russia was left without a powerful response.”

Zelenskyy continued to provide an operational update as to Russia’s advances, describing the city of Mariupol as a “Russian concentration camp in the middle of ruins”.

The city, which was one of the most developed in the region, is simply a Russian concentration camp in the middle of ruins. And the order of the occupiers in that part of Mariupol which they unfortunately still control differs insignificantly from what the Nazis did in the occupied territory of Eastern Europe.

But the Russian troops manage to be even more cynical than the Nazis 80 years ago. At that time, the invaders did not say that it was the Mariupol residents and the defenders of the city who shelled and killed themselves.”

The situation in the Kharkiv region is tough. But our military, our intelligence, have important tactical success.

In Donbas, the occupiers are doing everything to destroy any life in this area. Constant brutal bombings, constant Russian strikes at infrastructure and residential areas show that Russia wants to make this area uninhabited.

Describing the situation in the temporarily occupied areas of the Kherson region, Zelenskiy said Russian forces are allegedly preparing for the transition to the “ruble zone”.

“Any attempt to transfer our territory to Russia’s administrative, monetary, or any other system will mean only one thing: Russia itself will suffer from that,” he said. “Our responses, sanctions and other reactions of the free world to Russia’s aggressive actions will not be delayed.”

• Ukraine acknowledged heavy losses from Russia’s attack in the east as Moscow’s forces, having failed to seize the capital, redoubled their efforts to fully capture the eastern Donbas region. But Ukraine said casualties in the invading army were even worse. “We have serious losses, but the Russians’ losses are much much bigger … They have colossal losses,” a Ukrainian presidential adviser, Oleksiy Arestovych, said.

• European Union countries are likely to approve a phased embargo on Russian oil as early as next week, according to EU officials. European ambassadors are reportedly expected to give their approval of a finalised proposal by the end of next week after meeting on Wednesday, according to several EU officials and diplomats involved in the process.

• The US does not believe the threat of Russia using nuclear weapons despite a recent escalation in Moscow’s rhetoric, a senior US defence official said. Russia is days behind its schedule on its military operations in Ukraine’s Donbas region, a US defence official said, adding that the US believes that Russia’s fighting with Ukraine in the Donbas region will be a potential “knife fight”.
  
  
• Moscow has confirmed it carried out an airstrike on Kyiv during a visit by the UN secretary general, António Guterres. The defence ministry said two “high-precision, long-range air-based weapons” had destroyed the production buildings of the Artyom missile and space enterprise in the Ukrainian capital on Thursday night.

• The mayor of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko, however, said a 25-storey residential building in the capital’s Shevchenkivskyi district was hit in the strike. Klitschko said one body had been recovered. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty said one of its staff, the journalist and producer Vera Gyrych, had died “as a result of a Russian missile hitting the house where she lived” during Guterres’ visit.

• The situation inside the besieged Azovstal steel plant in the city of Mariupol is “beyond a humanitarian catastrophe”, a Ukrainian commander inside the facility has said. Serhiy Volyna, from the 36th separate marine brigade, said there were hundreds of people in the steelworks, including 60 young people, the youngest of whom is four months old. Ukraine hopes to evacuate civilians who are holed up in the steel plant with the last fighters defending the southern city, Zelenskiy’s office said.

• Two British aid workers who have reportedly been captured by Russian forces in Ukraine have been named. Presidium Network, a UK-based NGO that says it carries out evacuations of families and individuals from war zones, identified Paul Urey and Dylan Healy as the captured men. The Foreign Office said it was seeking further information about claims the two men who went to Ukraine to provide humanitarian aid have been captured.

• A former US Marine has been killed fighting alongside Ukrainian forces, the first US citizen known to have died in combat in the war with Russia. Willy Joseph Cancel, 22, was killed on Monday while working for a military contracting company that sent him to Ukraine, his mother told CNN. The US defence department warned US citizens that they should not go to Ukraine to fight.

• The US speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, says the House will vote to pass Joe Biden’s $33bn request for aid for Ukraine “as soon as possible”. Speaking at her weekly press briefing on Friday morning, the House speaker framed the administration’s request as one of a number of “emergencies” Congress needed to address urgently.

• Britain will send investigators to Ukraine to help gather evidence of war crimes, including sexual violence, the foreign secretary, Liz Truss, has said. Ukrainian prosecutors and the international criminal court (ICC) have been investigating potential war crimes in Ukraine since Russia’s 24 February invasion.

• The US has begun training Ukrainian armed forces at US sites located outside of Ukraine. A Pentagon spokesperson said that there are three sites outside of the US where Ukrainians are receiving training, including one in Germany.

• Vladimir Putin could announce the mass mobilisation of Russians on 9 May, Ben Wallace, the UK defence secretary, has said. Wallace said that Putin could declare that “we are now at war with the world’s Nazis and we need to mass mobilise the Russian people”.

• In an interview with Polish journalists, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that since Russia’s withdrawal from Kyiv, 900 bodies have been uncovered in mass graves. The Guardian’s Lorenzo Tondo confirmed with the deputy head prosecutor of Kyiv’s region that 900 bodies have been found so far, buried in several mass graves around the region.

• In his latest address, Zelenskiy thanked the US for its support via a revived second-world-war-era lend-lease program. He also thanked countries that have resumed diplomatic operations in Kyiv, saying: “Such gestures, together with strong defensive, financial and political support from the free world, mean that the need to end the war is becoming more and more obvious to Russia.”

Source: The Guardian wrote the original article. Bee News Daily contributed.

– Léonie Chao-Fong, Gloria Oladipo, Maanvi Singh

US Equipment Photo: US Military News