Military updates. The Ukrainian troops regained control of four more villages in Kharkiv region – Cherkaski Tyshky, Ruski Tyshky, Rubizhne, and Bayrak. Units of the 138th separate mechanized brigade of the 6th Combined Arms Army of the Western military district withdrew to Russia’s Belgorod as they took heavy losses in Kharkiv region, as per an update by the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. A considerable part of the remaining contract soldiers submitted resignation papers.
In Luhansk region, the clean-up of Bilohorivka continues. Eighty Russian troops that broke through the Siversky Donets River remain target.
Russia continues to storm Azovstal using strategic bombers, artillery, and tanks supported by infantry. More than one thousand Ukrainian troops remain at the Azovstal steelworks, of which hundreds are wounded. The Azov regiment appeals for their evacuation.
In Transnistria, an area occupied by Russia since 1992, the terrorist threat level is elevated. Local military units and the Russian forces are on high combat alert. Belarus checks the army’s combat capabilities and completes rotation of the force guarding the border with Ukraine in Brest and Gomel regions.
Russia blocks evacuation of Ukrainian troops from Mariupol, Zelenskyi said. Ukraine makes all efforts to get the wounded Ukrainian service members out of the Azovstal plant, President Zelenskyi said. Russia blocks all evacuation scenarios.
“We use all possible diplomatic tools to save them. But Russia had not agreed to any of the proposed plans. We asked our partners to provide us with weapons to unblock Mariupol. We still do not have the necessary pieces and amount of weapons to unblock Mariupol,” Zelenskyi said.
Picture of victory shifts to full liberation of territories, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister says. Ukraine has upgraded its war aims and is now looking to push Russian forces out of the country as long as western allies rapidly deliver promised heavy weaponry, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said in an interview with The Financial Times.
“Now if we are strong enough on the military front and we win the battle for Donbas, which will be crucial for the following dynamics of the war, of course the victory for us in this war will be the liberation of the rest of our territories,” Kuleba said.
Ukraine in Flames #61: Why Ukrainians and Russians are not brothers
Since the beginning of the war in 2014, the idea of fraternity with Russia became corrupt for Ukrainians. This concept is a sick work of Soviet propaganda to forcibly link Ukrainian history to Russian history, as well as deny Ukrainians the right to sovereign political choices. Ukraine in Flames #61 shows why believing in Ukrainian and Russian fraternity is supporting Russian propaganda.
Speakers:
Roman Malenkov, Editor-in-Chief of the “Ukraine Incognita” project
Vladlen Maraiev, PhD in Historical Sciences, co-author and host of the YouTube channel “History without Myths” (“(Історія Без Міфів”)
Olena Churanova, media expert and fact checker of the Stop Fake project