Ukraine War on the 48th: Russia has gathered troops in the final stage, Donetsk is constantly under fire

Russian soldiers patrol in the town of Volnovakha in the Donetsk region on April 11, AFP

Reuters news agency on April 12 quoted the governor of the Donetsk region of Ukraine Pavlo Kyrylenko The area is under Russian fire around the clock and Moscow is in the final stages of its campaign to push its troops into eastern Ukraine.

Russian forces are said to be concentrating their forces in the Donbass region after completing the first phase of the operation.

In addition, Russia is exerting great pressure in Mariupol, a strategic city located between the Donbass region in the north and the Crimean peninsula in the south.

See more: Ukrainian officials: the great war in Donbass has just begun

According to CNN, citing official Serhii Haidai in the Luhansk region, morgues in many cities in this region were full amid power outages, including in some places completely without power.

The area around the city of Severodonetsk, which has been under shelling for weeks, was the hardest hit. He said more than 300 people were evacuated from the Luhansk region on April 12, but about 90,000 people are still in shelters in residential areas.

According to Reuters, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on April 11 that Russia was gathering thousands of troops in eastern Ukraine to launch a new offensive. Reports from British intelligence indicate that Russia is continuing to shell in Donetsk and Luhansk. However, Ukrainian forces said they were able to repel some of the attacks and destroy tanks and vehicles military Russia.

See more: Ukraine War Day 47: Russia concentrates its forces in eastern Ukraine

President Putin defends his position

TASS news agency on April 12 quoted Russian President Vladimir Putin as saying that the country has a “noble” goal when carrying out military operations in Ukraine and will achieve that goal.

Speaking at the Vostochny Cosmodrome in eastern Russia, where he was receiving Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, Putin said the “special operation” in Ukraine was the right step because Russia “didn’t have a choice. “.

He said the goal of the operation was to help the people of the Donbass region and “take measures to ensure the security of Russia itself”.

In addition, he said that peace talks with Russia reached a dead end because Ukraine “fake assumptions” about war crimes when accusing Russia, and because Ukraine offered to guarantee the security of the entire territory.

Ukraine has not commented on Putin’s statements.

See more: Putin: ‘Operation in Ukraine is the right step, Russia will not be isolated’

Tension meeting in Moscow

Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer is the first EU leader to visit Russia to meet President Vladimir Putin since hostilities broke out in Ukraine and the meeting was as tense as expected.

Austrian Prime Minister Karl Nehammer on April 11, had a 75-minute closed-door meeting with President Putin at the Russian leader’s residence in the suburbs of Moscow. There was no press conference, a joint statement was issued, and no photos or video footage was released.

Mr. Nehammer said that this was not a friendly visit but a very frank, open and difficult conversation. Nehammer told the Russian leader that he had been to Ukraine and witnessed “incalculable suffering” during the war and raised the issue of “war crimes” during his meeting with Putin.

see more: Leader of the first EU member state to come to Russia since the outbreak of war in Ukraine

Russia sent a warning to the US?

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov recently said that the military operation in Ukraine was necessary to end the order world dominated by the United States, after Washington revealed its goal of targeting Moscow in supporting Ukrainian troops against Russian troops.

See more: Russia says military operation in Ukraine aims to end US world order