latest news and war situation May 17, 2022

The battle for Mariupol is over. Ukraine has considered “ending the defense of the Azovstal steel plant” and thus of the entire city of Mariupol, in the southeastern part of the country.

In other words, the chapter closes for Russia with the “surrender” of the 264 Ukrainian soldiers who resisted in the steel factory for more than two months. The Kremlin, which considers these soldiers to be prisoners of war, has guaranteed that they will be treated “in accordance with international law,” said Russian presidency spokesman Dmitri Peskov.

83 days have passed since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine, a period in which: Azovstal it became a symbol of resistance.

The General Staff of the Army Ukraine said this Tuesday that the soldiers who resisted… armed forces Russians at the Azovstal . steel factory they accomplished their mission”after he managed to evacuate more than 200 soldiers from the area. The question remains whether there are still people in the factory, although Ukrainian sources suggest they are.

Ukraine has today stated that it will continue to “save the lives” of the fighters entrenched in Azovstal and has trusted To power “exchange them for Russian prisoners of war”

However, the President of the State Duma (Lower house) of the Russian parliament, Viacheslav Volodin, has assured that the “Nazi criminals”, referring to the members of the nationalist Azov battalion, may not be exchanged “They are war criminals and we must do everything we can to bring them to justice,” he said.

The ultra-nationalist deputy The Russian Leonid Slutski, who has gone further, believes that Azov’s fighters – including ultra-nationalists – capital punishment, and has proposed “making an exception in the moratorium on the use of the death penalty in Russia”. Russia introduced such a moratorium upon joining the Council of Europe in 1996.

no negotiations

the government of Russia has acknowledged that currently there is no negotiation with the Ukrainian authorities to ease war tensions, according to Moscow because of Kiev’s lack of commitment to a dialogue that has yielded hardly any practical results.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Rudenko has confirmed that “talks are not going ahead”. “In reality, Ukraine came out of this processhe told the press during a forum gathered by the TASS news agency.

Moscow accuses Kiev of not responding to his proposals and Russian President Vladimir Putin himself assured his Finnish counterpart, Sauli Niinisto, in a recent meeting that the Ukrainian authorities have “no interest” in achieving peace.

The accusations are mutual, as the government of Ukraine has also spoken out in similar terms against that of Russia. In fact, the Ukrainian president, Volodimir Zelensky, has several times proposed a face-to-face meeting with Putin, without success.

Negotiations between the parties stalled a month and a half ago after fighting intensified in Mariupol and images of Bucha came to light.

The latest round of face-to-face talks between delegates from both countries took place in Istanbul on March 29.

After this meeting, the parties suggested tentative progress in the negotiations, but in the weeks that followed it became clear that the differences remain irreconcilable, despite the fact that contacts continued in videoconference format.

For example, Russia’s chief negotiator, Valdímir Medinski, assured on May 9 that remote negotiations continue and “have not stopped”.

Attacks in Chernigov and Lviv

Meanwhile, military activities continue with Russian offensive and Ukrainian counter-attacks. At least Eight people died and 12 others were injured. in the early hours of this Tuesday as a result of an airstrike with missiles by the Russian army in the region of Chernigov, in the north of Ukraine and near Kiev.

Also in the Sumy region, in the northeast of the country, the Russians carried out attacks on several cities bordering Russia today, according to the “Northern” Operational Command of Ukraine published on its Facebook page.

The Russian Armed Forces they have destroyed with long-range cruise missiles “Kalibr” in the region of Lviv weapons and war equipment sent to Ukraine by the United States and the European Union, the Russian Defense Ministry reported today. According to Defense spokesman Igor Konashenkov, it was weapons prepared for shipment to the Donbas region

In its efforts to stop the possible arrival of weapons from the West to the front, the Russian army has destroyed an electrical substation at Merefa railway station, in the Kharkiv region, preventing the operation of electric trains in that area. the attacks did not cause any casualties.