At Victory Day parade, Putin makes no formal announcements of war, mobilization. At the Victory Day parade in Moscow on May 9, Putin did not officially declare war on Ukraine, neither did he announce a full-scale mobilization. In his 11-minute speech, the dictator did not mention once the phrase “special military operation”. Speaking at the Victory Day parade, Putin repeated propagandistic clichés of Ukraine invasion. He did not say the words “war”, “Ukraine” or “special military operation”.
“Less than a minute into his speech, Putin turns to conspiracy theories about NATO plotting to attack Russia through Ukraine Nazis,” Bellingcat’s investigator Christo Grozev twitted. Grozev sarcastically listed Putin’s key propagandist messages concluding: “No announcement of mobilization in his speech thus, just more ‘grievances and messianism’”.
Russian forces staged “Victory Day parades” in occupied Kherson and in Mariupol. They failed to do so in Melitopol.
Mariupol: Azovstal continues fight. On Sunday, May 8, the Ukrainian troops defending Mariupol held a press briefing. Deputy commander of the Azov regiment Svyatoslav Palamar call sign “Kalyna” and Azov’s intelligence officer Illya Samoylenko spoke during a remote video press conference from Azovstal as the Ukrainian troops continue to defend the steelworks. Heavy fighting rages. Here’s what the service members said.
Russia’s fatal losses in Mariupol climb to 2.5 thousand troops. Five thousand more were wounded, Illya Samoylenko said. That is more than 15 per cent of Russia’s total losses.
“We have destroyed more than 60 tanks and damaged 30 more. That is 10 per cent of their total losses. We also destroyed 10 per cent of the occupants’ artillery systems,” Samoylenko said.
The Russian troops broke into Azovstal on May 4, Illya Samoyleno said. Heavy fighting rages between the Ukrainian forces and Russia’s occupying troops.
Metropolitan Onufriy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate appealed to Putin asking him to use the procedure of extraction of the Ukrainian troops from the besieged plant. “Throughout various wars, the fighting sides were willing to make a gesture of humanism, Onufriy said in the address.
“We know that in Syria, Russia was a mediator during evacuation of fighters who were encircled.”
“We hope that in the Christian spirit, you would agree to use the procedure of extraction of the Ukrainian troops in Mariupol to let civilians, policemen, border guards, and service members flee from encirclement to the government-controlled area of Ukraine or to third countries.”
“Many countries consider it an honorable operation. I ask you to choose one, in the name of the resurrected Christ,” Onufriy said.
Russia steals millions in grain. Russia stole hundreds of millions of dollars worth of 400-500 tons of grain from the territories it occupies, Ukraine’s Minister of Agriculture Mykola Solskyi said. Russia’s military and security service are in charge of the operation as they send grain to Crimea and sell it from there.
More than two hundred children killed in Russia’s invasion. As of May 9, there were more than 641 child casualties resulting from Russia’s all-out war. Two hundred and twenty-six children were killed, and more than 415 were injured.
The numbers are not final as verification continues in areas of active fighting, temporarily occupied and retaken territories.
Here’s a region-by-region breakdown of the child casualties: Donetsk – 139, Kyiv – 116, Kharkiv – 99, Chernihiv – 68, Kherson – 46, Mykolayiv – 44, Luhansk – 44, Zaporizhzhia – 28, Sumy – 17, Zhytomyr – 15, and the city of Kyiv – 16.
Ukraine in Flames #59:What Ukrainians go through escaping from the Russian occupation
The episode is dedicated to the terrible experience of people who tried to escape from the occupied territories.Checks by Russian occupiers on the checkpoints, deportations and filtration camps is not the whole list of what Ukrainians go through for more than 2 months.
Speakers:
Svitlana, refugee from Melitopol, Zaporizhzhia Oblast
Mykola Zhulynsky, Academician of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Director of the Taras Shevchenko Institute of Literature of National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine
Ukraine in Flames #58: Russian geopolitical blackmail going beyond Ukraine
Ukraine in Flames #60: How to make Russian propagandists take responsibility for their words
