Day 46: Ukraine preparing for ‘big battle’ as West rushes arms

Thousands of Ukrainians have fled eastern Ukraine as officials in Kiev say they are preparing for “big battles” against the Russian forces there.

“Ukraine is ready for big battles. Ukraine must win them, including in the Donbass. And once that happens, Ukraine will have a more powerful negotiating position,” Zelenskyy’s adviser Mykhaylo Podolyak said on national television, as quoted by the Interfax news agency.

Evacuations resumed on Saturday from Kramatorsk in eastern Ukraine, where a missile strike killed 52 people at a railway station a day earlier, as British Prime Minister Boris Johnson became the latest Western leader to visit Kiev.

UK prime minister visits Ukraine, promises to shower Kiev with military, financial aid

Britain’s Johnson promises to provide Ukraine with considerable volumes of military and financial aid.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian officials said that Ukraine has set up nine humanitarian corridors to bring civilians encircled by fighting in the east of the country to safety. The decision was announced by Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk on Sunday and will include private cars from Mariupol.

“All the routes for the humanitarian corridors in the Luhansk region will work as long as there is a ceasefire by the occupying Russian troops,” Vereshchuk said in a statement on her Telegram channel, referring to separatist-controlled Luhansk.

As Ukrainian civilians were evacuating form the region, Russia fired shells into the region on early morning, hitting several buildings, wounding one person and causing a fire, regional officials said.

A school and a high-rise apartment building were shelled in the city of Sievierodonetsk in the besieged region of Luhansk, the region’s governor said. “Fortunately, no casualties,” Serhiy Gaidai wrote on Telegram.

A missile hit a building in the Pavlograd district of the Dnipro, regional Governor Valentyn Reznichenko said in a post.

A total of 4,553 people were evacuated from Ukrainian cities through humanitarian corridors on Saturday, fewer than the 6,665 who escaped on Friday, Vereshchuk said.

Russian troops are retreating from Ukraine’s northern region to focus on eastern and southern parts of the country, as the third round of prisoner swap is underway on the conflict’s 46th day.

Third round of prisoner exchange

Russian Human Rights Commissioner Tatiana Moskalkova confirmed on Sunday that Russia and Ukraine carried out a prisoner exchange on Saturday. Ukraine also announced that it carried out the “third exchange” of prisoners with Russia, which allowed the release of 12 Ukrainian soldiers and 14 civilians.

Moskalkova said that among those exchanged to Russia, there were four employees of the State Atomic Energy Corporation Rosatom and soldiers. “Early this morning they landed on the Russian soil,” she said in an online post.

Ukraine carried out its first prisoner swap with Russia at the end of March, a month after the start of the conflict, when ten Russian soldiers were exchanged for ten Ukrainian soldiers, and eleven Russian civilian sailors, rescued from a ship that sank in the Black Sea near Odessa, for 19 Ukrainian civilians captured by the Russians.

Several other exchanges of soldiers and civilians have already taken place between Ukrainians and Russians since the beginning of the war on February 24, without being officially confirmed each time by the two parties.

Day 45: Russia raids Ukraine air base; Zelensky calls for harsher sanctions

Russia says its forces have destroyed an ammunition depot at an air base in central-eastern Ukraine as President Volodymyr Zelensky calls for harsher sanctions against Moscow.

Dozens of Ukrainian civilians found in mass graves as battle moves towards East

A grave with dozens of civilians has been found in Buzova village near Kiev, a Ukrainian official said, the latest reported mass grave to be discovered after Russian forces withdrew from areas north of the capital to focus their assault on the east.

Taras Didych, head of the Dmytrivka community that includes Buzova, said the bodies were found in a ditch near a petrol station. He said the number of dead had yet to be confirmed.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Russia’s use of force was “a catastrophe that will inevitably hit everyone”.

In an address late on Saturday, he renewed his appeal to Western allies for a complete embargo on Russian energy products and more weapons for Ukraine.

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