The Pentagon sees little progress by Russia in eastern Ukraine. Moscow makes a claim about Ukrainian children. The military ticker on the Ukraine war.
- Escalated Ukraine conflict: Since February 24, 2022, Russian troops have been fighting for Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin in the neighboring country.
- Storming of Azovstal Steel Works: Apparently the Russian army has them Bunker in which hundreds of people are holed up was bombed
- Moscow military claims that 200,000 Ukrainian children brought to Russia had been.
- This News ticker on military developments in the Ukraine war is continuously updated. You can read the background to the Ukraine war here.
Update from May 3, 2:52 p.m: The widespread impression in the West that the Russian advance has been severely slowed down may not entirely correspond to reality – at least that’s the opinion of an Austrian military expert. A Russian victory is by no means impossible, he believes.
Ukraine war: first official attempt at annexation planned by Putin?
Update from May 3, 2:25 p.m.: Not only in Mariupol, but also in other areas of eastern Ukraine, Russia continued its attacks in the Ukraine war with severity. The Ministry of Defense in Kyiv reported “active and heavy fighting” especially in the Luhansk region.
The US warned that Moscow could soon annex the self-proclaimed “People’s Republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk. To this end, manipulated referendums on the union of the two separatist regions in the Donbass are planned.
The US Department of Defense also confirmed that Russian Chief of Staff Valery Gerasimov visited the Donbass region last week. There had been reports that Gerasimov had been injured by a Ukrainian attack. Apparently, he had already left the shelled area in the city of Izyum at the time of the Ukrainian attack.
Ukraine war: “Azovstal is stormed” – Ukraine reports attack on steel works
Update from May 3, 1:55 p.m.: According to media reports, Russian troops have begun to storm the besieged Azovstal steelworks in the fiercely contested city of Mariupol. “They bombed us from the air all night (…) and now Azovstal is being stormed,” the newspaper quoted as saying Ukrainian Truth on Tuesday the deputy commander of the Ukrainian Azov regiment, Sviatoslav Palamar. Two civilians were also killed in the recent Russian attacks, Palamar said.
There was initially no official confirmation from the Russian side. However, the state news agency Ria Novosti, citing a spokesman for the Defense Ministry, reported that Azov fighters entrenched on the factory premises used a ceasefire to return to their firing positions. These would now be attacked with artillery and from the air.
Ukraine war: buses with rescued people from Mariupol expected
Update from May 3, 12:49 p.m.: Buses carrying people rescued from Mariupol are expected in the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhia within the next few hours. The Ukrainian health authorities as well as volunteers, Doctors Without Borders and the World Health Organization are prepared for all medical emergencies, WHO coordinator Dorit Nitzan told reporters in Geneva on Tuesday via video.
“We are attuned to burns, fractures, wounds, infections, diarrhea, respiratory infections, malnutrition and the needs of pregnant women. We’re well prepared,” said Nitzan. How many people come and what condition they are in is not clear, Nitzan said.
Zaporizhia under Ukrainian control is about 230 kilometers northwest of Mariupol. This port city has been almost completely destroyed and largely captured by the Russian military since the start of its war of aggression against Ukraine with bombing and missile attacks.
–Ukraine war news: Pentagon sees confused approach to Putin’s offensive – New concern: 200,000 children from Ukraine in Russia?
Kyiv/Washington, DC – According to the US Department of Defense, Russia is making “at best minimal progress” in the Ukraine war in eastern Ukraine. Russian troops are still suffering from poor leadership and control, morale in many units is low and logistics are not optimal, a senior Pentagon official said in Washington on Monday. “They still haven’t solved all the logistical problems,” he added. One observes that the Russian military invades places in the Donbass, declares victory and then withdraws the troops again and leaves the region to the Ukrainians again.
“So there’s been a constant back-and-forth over the past few days,” the Pentagon official said. The Ukrainian military, for example, was able to push the Russians back further from the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, it said. The Russians are clearly in “offensive mode”, but not as successful as expected. The Pentagon representative emphasized that all these developments were not only due to a lack of Russian planning: the Ukrainians put up really good resistance.
Current Ukraine news: Allegedly 200,000 children brought to Russia during the war
According to Moscow military figures, almost 1.1 million people have meanwhile been brought to Russia from the contested areas of Ukraine. Almost 200,000 of them are children, said Colonel General Mikhail Mizinzew in Moscow. On Monday alone, 11,500 people, including 1,850 children, were brought to Russia, the Interfax agency quoted him as saying.
–According to the Russian account, these people from Ukraine are being brought to safety from the fighting and alleged violence by the Kiev leadership around President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Alleged refugees from the separatist republics of Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine were brought to Russia even before the Russian attack on February 24.
Ukraine sees this as a deportation of its citizens from the currently Russian-occupied areas in the east and south. According to Kyiv, the Russian army is not letting people flee to Ukrainian-controlled territory. The Ukrainian Security Council accused Russia of kidnapping the children and using them for propaganda purposes. (dpa/aka)
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