A 40-mile convoy of tanks and other vehicles threatened Ukraine’s capital Kyiv on the sixth day of the conflict as its president accused Russia of war crimes.
Vladimir Putin’s forces launched what Ukraine’s ambassador to the US has said were vacuum bomb attacks as Russia intensified bombing of the city of Kharkiv.
Vladimir Putin launched an indiscriminate bombing campaign on Kharkiv just 24 hours after local resistance had sent his troops packing from its streets.
The bombs, shells and rockets which began falling yesterday left at least 11 dead, including three children, with homes and even a school reduced to rubble.
Regional governor Dmytro Zhyvytskyy said that Russian artillery also struck a military base in the city of Okhtyrka and more than 70 Ukrainian soldiers were killed.
After a first, five-hour session of peace talks between Ukraine and Russia yielded no stop in the fighting, both sides agreed to another meeting in the coming days, but Ukraine’s embattled president Volodymyr Zelensky said he believed the stepped up shelling was designed to force him into concessions.
The Kremlin has found itself increasingly isolated by economic embargoes that have sent its currency plummeting and seen it booted out of the World Cup.
Meanwhile, Britain’s UN Ambassador warned at an emergency meeting of the Security Council that Ukraine is on the verge of a humanitarian tragedy.
The United Nations has expressed serious concern of another Chernobyl catastrophe after Russian troops started operating near Ukraine’s largest nuclear power station.
Rafael Grossi, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said he was following the events in Ukraine extremely closely and with serious concern.
Formula One’s governing body will stage an emergency meeting to discuss the situation in Ukraine. It’s understood that the fate of F1’s sole Russian driver Nikita Mazepin is set to top the agenda.
Russia pledges that it will strike back against the EU following its support of Ukraine and warned the West against supplying weapons to the country, and a second round of talks aimed at ending Russia’s attack on Ukraine was set to take place after the first meeting concluded without resolution.
Ukraine’s MoD says Russia has lost 5,300 soldiers, 29 planes, 29 helicopters and 151 tanks.
Russia’s MoD has admitted suffering losses but declined to say how many.
Ukraine documented 352 civilian casualties since the beginning of the attack, including 14 children. The UN puts the civilian toll at 102, including seven children.
But it seems that Vladimir Putin is only in talks to buy himself more time for a military solution. He desperately needs to win with military strength to show the rest of the world how good his army is, and he needs a victory to help threaten other countries he wants to control. He has no interest in talks.
It gives him time to get that long tank convoy to where he wants it, and there’s no way Vladimir Putin will negotiate because he wants them to surrender and roll over, but they’re not going to do that, and what’s the point in peace talks if Vladimir Putin can’t be trusted to abide by the outcome?
This man has far too much power and he appears to have the ability and freedom to do what he wants. He’s just one man and this war will end up being World War III if he’s allowed to continue. He wants to ruin countries and have control over them as Hitler did.
Vladimir Putin has no intention of agreeing to peace and he’s just keeping Zelensky occupied while he continues to destroy Ukraine because he’s a deranged dictator intent on taking what he wants and eradicating what he can’t.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 