the situation on the ground on day 62
The United States said it was ready on Tuesday to “move heaven and earth” to win Ukraine, for the Ukrainian president victory is only a matter of time, but the morale of the troops in kyiv is deteriorating and the Russian forces continue to gain ground in the east.
Here is an update on the situation, based on elements from AFP journalists on site, official Ukrainian and Russian statements, Western sources, analysts and international organizations.
Ballast
Several localities like Izium and Kreminna have fallen in the past two weeks and the Russian army continues to nibble away at ground, pocket by pocket. “The offensive can start from one day to another”, estimated Monday on France 24 Ighor Zhovkva, deputy director of the cabinet of the Ukrainian president.
“The Russians are trying to advance towards the towns of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk from the north and east,” according to the British Ministry of Defence.
In the Donbas regions, “the enemy is carrying out strikes on the positions of our troops along the entire length of the front line with mortars, artillery and multiple rocket launchers”, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said on Telegram on Tuesday. .
In the Lugansk region in particular, the town of Popasna continues to be shelled, with three dead found under the rubble of a collapsed building, its governor Serguiï Gaïdaï said on Tuesday.
And in the Donetsk region, at least two civilians were killed and six others injured in different localities, according to its governor Pavlo Kyrylenko.
“We have a very fragmented front line, which does not follow a river, a road or a highway. Now it’s a village of ours, one of them, one of us, like on a chessboard, ”summarizes a spokeswoman for the Ukrainian army.
In a bombardment in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, three people were killed and seven injured, two seriously, according to regional authorities.
South
Two Russian missiles hit the city of Zaporizhia on Tuesday morning, killing at least one person and injuring an unspecified company, according to the regional administration.
Zaporizhia, a major industrial center on the Dnieper River, to the south of which is also Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, has in recent weeks been the reception point for Ukrainian civilians fleeing the siege of Mariupol and other bombed cities in the Donbass.
Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said on Tuesday that the city is now preparing for an attack by Russian forces from the coast.
In Mariupol, almost entirely controlled by the Russians but where some 100,000 civilians are still trapped according to kyiv, the situation is still blocked.
Russian forces continue to shell the vast Azovstal metallurgical complex there, where the last Ukrainian fighters are entrenched with, according to them, nearly 1,000 civilians, Governor Kyrylenko said on Tuesday.
Chernobyl
The level of radioactivity in Chernobyl is “abnormal”, said Tuesday the head of the IAEA, Rafael Grossi, during a visit to the site 36 years to the day after the worst nuclear disaster in history, in 1986.
The occupation of the site 150 north of kyiv by the Russian army, between February 24 and the end of March, was “very, very dangerous”, he denounced. The site was notably affected by a power cut.
Human losses
There is no overall civilian death toll. In Mariupol alone, the Ukrainian authorities speak of 20,000 dead, due to the fighting but also to the lack of food, water and electricity.
Russia is “ready to cooperate” with the United Nations to “relieve” civilian populations in Ukraine, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov assured Tuesday during a press conference with UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres. in Moscow.
On the military side, President Volodymyr Zelensky said that around 2,500 to 3,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed since the start of the conflict and some 10,000 injured.
The Kremlin recently admitted to its side “significant losses”. On March 25, he acknowledged the death of 1,351 soldiers for 8,825 wounded. Some Western sources report up to 12,000 dead Russian soldiers.
.