Dhe Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy sees his country confronted with massive challenges in towns and cities formerly occupied by Russian troops. The amount of work to restore normal life is “really enormous”. According to him, up to 3,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed in the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine. According to information from Kyiv, the shelling by Russian troops continued. Moscow is sending protest notes to countries supplying arms to Ukraine.
The Ukrainian authorities are continuing to restore normal life in the areas that are again under Ukrainian control, Zelenskyy said in his evening video message on Saturday night. The scope of the work in the 918 towns and cities of different sizes is massive. Mining work is being carried out and the supply of electricity, water and gas to the places is restored. The police, post office and local authorities are also resuming their work. Train connections have been set up again in the Sumy region in the north-east of the country or, as in the case of the city of Chernihiv in the north, are about to be resumed.
Humanitarian staffs have so far been established in 338 such locations. Among other things, they provided emergency medical care, said Selenskyj. Schools and other educational institutions should also be resumed where possible. As of Friday, Russian troops had destroyed or damaged 1,018 educational institutions in the country, Zelenskyy said. The information could not be independently verified.
Report on destruction in Sieverodonetsk
According to Ukrainian sources, the city of Sievjerodonetsk in the Luhansk region was also badly damaged by the Russian war of aggression. According to the head of the city’s military administration, Olexandr Strjuk, the city is about 70 percent destroyed. The most important roads were badly damaged and the water supply was also shut down pending repair work, Stryuk said on Ukraine’s national television. Of the approximately 130,000 residents before the war, only around 20,000 people are still on site. The information could not initially be independently verified.
According to Ukrainian sources, at least ten people were killed when the industrial district of the eastern Ukrainian metropolis of Kharkiv was shelled. A seven-month-old baby was among the victims, the prosecutor’s office for the Kharkiv region announced on Facebook on Friday evening. Ukraine also reported a Russian airstrike on an airfield in the city of Oleksandriya in the Kirovohrad region of central Ukraine. The rescue work was going on, Mayor Serhiy Kuzmenko wrote on Facebook. There was initially no information about damage or casualties.
Selenskyj speaks of 20,000 dead Russian soldiers
According to information from Kyiv, 2,500 to 3,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed since the beginning of the Russian invasion. According to a translation, Selenskyj said this to the US television station CNN in an interview, the first excerpts of which were distributed on Friday. He also reported about 10,000 injured soldiers on the Ukrainian side. It is difficult to say how many of them would survive.
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According to Zelenskyy, 20,000 soldiers have already been killed on the Russian side. Moscow recently spoke of around 1,350 military personnel killed in its own ranks.
The President again called for tougher sanctions against Moscow. “The next package of sanctions against Russia must include a waiver of Russian oil,” he said in his video address. Selenskyj called the current punitive measures against Russia “serious”, but not sufficient. “We demand stronger, more destructive ones.” The war could also be shortened if Kyiv received all the weapons it needed quickly.
Russia sends protest notes over arms shipments
Russia has sent protest notes to several Western countries over arms sales to Ukraine. The United States was among them, said Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, according to the Interfax agency. According to the Washington Post, Moscow warns in the letter that such deliveries could have “unpredictable consequences”.
Since the Russian war of aggression began seven weeks ago, Ukraine has received arms from many countries. Germany wants to increase its arms aid to partner countries to two billion euros. Most of the money will go to Ukraine.
According to President Zelenskyy, Ukraine has almost completed the answers to a questionnaire for EU accession. “The work is almost complete and we will soon make the answers available to the representatives of the European Union,” he said in his video message. The questionnaire serves as the basis for accession talks.
Logistics industry strained due to war
According to Federal Transport Minister Volker Wissing (FDP), the war in Ukraine is also having a major impact on the logistics sector in Germany. “The supply chains are severely affected,” Wissing told the editorial network Germany. The Silk Road, for example, is used less because freight forwarders take risks when they transport goods over it. In Poland alone, around 100,000 Ukrainian truck drivers were missing because they had been drafted into the military in their home country. High energy prices also made things difficult for the industry.
Wissing emphasized that Germany will not reject any refugees from Ukraine in the future either.
This Saturday, Easter marches by the peace movement are planned in several German cities. The rallies are primarily directed against the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine.
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