Ukraine: WAR BULLETIN April 5, 5.30 pm EST
Embassy of Ukraine in the USA
WAR BULLETIN
April 5, 5.30 pm EST
WAR ROOM
General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine
The forty-first day of the heroic resistance of the Ukrainian people to a Russian military invasion continues.
Measures to regroup the troops of the Russian Federation continue. The enemy did not abandon the purpose of the operation to establish full control over the territory of Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Russian enemy is trying to improve position of its units in the Tavriya and Pivdennobuzhsky operational districts.
Russian fascists, ignoring the rules of international humanitarian law, continue to use aircraft and artillery to strike at civilian infrastructure and industry. Thus, as a result of the shelling of the city of Rubizhne, Luhansk region, the occupiers damaged a tank with nitric acid.
In the western military district of the Russian Federation, in order to recruit units that have suffered losses on the territory of Ukraine, covert mobilization measures are being carried out. In addition, the command of the armed forces of the Russian federation is trying to make up for the loss of personnel by involving representatives of military schools. The Chita Suvorov Military School of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia conducted a written survey of teaching staff on their readiness to take part in a “special operation” outside the Russian Federation. Many teachers have given up on possible involvement in the “performance of tasks” and are ready to be discharged from military service.
The export of military equipment of the armed forces of the Russian Federation from the territory of the republic of Belarus by railways and military aero planes continues in the Siversky direction. At the same time, the movement of certain units of the armed forces of the republic of Belarus in the direction of the state border of Ukraine was detected. The rotation of units involved in strengthening the protection of the state border of Belarus is not ruled out.
In the Slobozhansky direction the blockade by the Russian enemy of the separate area of the Kharkiv region proceeds. In the settlements of Velykyi Burluk, Prykolotne and Fedorivka, the Russian occupiers are searching for pro-Ukrainian residents and illegally detaining them.
In the city of Izyum, the Russian occupiers are fabricating evidence on the war crimes of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. To this end, they are shelling the settlement and creating a kind of “documentation”.
In the Donetsk direction, the enemy, with the support of aircraft and artillery, continues to storm the city of Mariupol.
In the temporarily occupied territory of the Zaporizhzhia region, in the city of Berdyansk, local residents are being detained.
In Tokmak, medical staff at local health facilities are being forced to sign so-called “contracts” with the Russian Ministry of Health.
Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine
Since the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation, law enforcement officers have registered 415 criminal proceedings under Art. 111 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine – high treason and 222 under Art. 111-1 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine – collaborative activities. Currently, 94 people are reasonably suspected of high treason and defecting to the enemy, another 27 – in collaboration.
Among the suspects are Illia Kyva, a former People’s Deputy and “talking head” of Russian TV propaganda broadcasts, the Deputy of Melitopol, who declared herself “mayor”, Deputy of Poltava regional council, Deputy of Energodar city council, who helped organize the work on Zaporizhzhia NPP in the interests of Russia.
Deputy Head of the Berdyansk Regional State Administration, Mayor of Kupyansk, Head of the Southern Territorial Community, who appealed to the local council to block the issuance of firearms by the military formation of Ukraine. The day before, the judge and the chief of the Starobilsky District Court of Luhansk oblast staff were also notified of the suspicion.
We do not turn a blind eye to such shameful facts in the prosecutor’s office. The day before, on the point of high treason, the head of one of the district prosecutor’s offices of Mykolaiv oblast was detained. Found out “werewolf” among the staff of the Head of the Mykolaiv Regional prosecutor’s offices. Exposed the Special Prosecutor in the Military and Defense Spheres of the Southern Region and Security Service of Ukraine investigators.
We have recorded that this, shamefully speaking, Prosecutor performed the criminal tasks of the representatives of the aggressor state. The supporter of the “Russian world” systematically “leaked” with the enemy information on the quantity and places of detention of prisoners of war of the Armed forces of the Russian Federation, resulting of attacks on the Mykolaiv oblast. He also shared with the “customer” data on the dead servicemen and civilians and other information that was interesting for the occupiers.
In exchange for this information, he hoped to continue working in the prosecutor’s office in the event of an enemy capture of the region but forgot that such actions include life imprisonment. His activities were stopped in time, and more serious consequences were avoided.
The alleged activities in favor of the enemy and cooperation with the aggressor are currently being investigated among law enforcement officers, employees of correctional colonies, the State Statistics Service of Ukraine, executive service bodies, the forest industry, customs officers, assistants to People’s deputies of Ukraine, and other citizens of Ukraine.
We will show traitors true colors. We know all of you! Those who repaint and change their shoes on the fly will face the maximum penalty. “Russian world” will not save you.
During the occupation of the city of Bucha, servicemen of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, in violation of international humanitarian law, killed civilians and set their bodies on fire in order to cover up the crime.
In the village Velyka Dymerka, Brovary district, 11 civilians were killed as a result of the use of firearms and artillery by Russian servicemen. In the village of Bogdanovka, a local resident died from shrapnel wounds during the shelling of the settlement by the occupiers.
Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights
Shocking new evidence of Russia’s violation of the Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War continues.
Among the 86 soldiers released from Russian captivity were women who had been subjected to torture and ill-treatment in captivity.
The women were taken to Belarus and then to a pre-trial detention center in Bryansk, Russia, where the women were tortured and threatened.
POLICY
President of Ukraine
Speech of President V.Zelenskyy at the UN Security Council
I am sure that all the representatives of the UN member states will hear me today. Yesterday I returned from our city of Bucha, recently liberated from the troops of the Russian Federation.
It is difficult to find a war crime that the occupiers have not committed there. The Russian military searched for and purposefully killed anyone who served our state. They executed women outside the houses when approaching and simply calling someone alive. They killed whole families – adults and children, they tried to burn their bodies.
How is this different from what the ISIS terrorists were doing in the occupied territory?
Except that it is done by a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. They promote hatred at the state level and seeks to export it to other countries through its system of propaganda and political corruption. They provoke a global food crisis that could lead to famine in Africa and Asia, and will certainly end in large-scale political chaos in countries where food price stability is a key factor of domestic security.
So where is the security that the Security Council must guarantee? There is no security. Although there is a Security Council, as if nothing happened.
So where is the peace that the United Nations was created to guarantee? It is obvious that the key institution of the world, which must ensure the coercion of any aggressors to peace, simply cannot work effectively.
I would like to remind you of the first article of the first chapter of the UN Charter. What is the purpose of our organization? To maintain peace. And to force to peace. Now the UN Charter is being violated literally from the first article. And if so, what is the point of all other articles?
Today, it is as a result of Russia’s actions on the territory of my state, on the territory of Ukraine, that the most heinous war crimes of all time since the end of World War II are being committed. Russian troops are deliberately destroying Ukrainian cities to ashes with artillery and air strikes. They are deliberately blocking cities, creating mass starvation in them. They are deliberately shooting at columns of civilians on the roads who are trying to escape from the territory of hostilities. They are even deliberately blowing up shelters where civilians are hiding from air strikes. They are deliberately creating conditions in the temporarily occupied territories so that as many civilians as possible are killed there.
The massacre in our city of Bucha is just one, unfortunately, of many examples of what the occupiers have been doing on our land for 41 days. And there are many other such places that the world has yet to find out the full truth of: Mariupol, Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Okhtyrka, Borodyanka and dozens of other Ukrainian communities, each of which is like Bucha.
I know, and you know very well, what the representatives of Russia will say in response to the accusations of these crimes. They have said this many times. The most illustrative was after the downing of a Malaysian Boeing over Donbas by Russian forces with Russian weapons. Or during the war in Syria.
They will blame everyone, just to justify themselves. They will say that there are different versions, and which of them is true is allegedly impossible to establish yet. They will even say that the bodies of those killed were allegedly “planted”, and all the videos are staged.
But. Now is the year 2022. There is conclusive evidence. There are satellite images. It is possible to conduct a full, transparent investigation. That is what we are interested in. Maximum access of journalists. Maximum cooperation with international institutions. Involvement of the International Criminal Court. Full truth, full responsibility.
The power of the UN Charter must be restored immediately. The UN system must be reformed immediately so that the right of veto is not the right of death. So that there is a fair representation of all regions of the world in the Security Council.
The aggressor must be forced to peace immediately. Determination is needed. The chain of mass killings from Syria to Somalia, from Afghanistan to Yemen and Libya should have been stopped a long time ago to be honest.
Immediately bring the Russian military and those who gave them orders to justice for war crimes in Ukraine. Everyone who gave criminal orders and fulfilled them by killing people will face a tribunal similar to the Nuremberg trials.
I want to remind Russian diplomats that a man like von Ribbentrop has not avoided punishment after World War II. And I also want to remind the architects of Russia’s criminal policy that punishment has reached Adolf Eichmann as well. None of the culprits will escape!
But the main thing is that today is the time to transform the system, the core of which is the United Nations. To do this, we propose to convene a global conference. And we ask to do it already in peaceful Kyiv – in order to decide.
Therefore, we must do everything in our power to pass on to the next generations an effective UN with the ability to respond preventively to security challenges and thus guarantee peace. Ukraine is ready to provide a platform for one of the main offices of the updated security system.
Just as the Geneva office specializes in human rights, just as the Nairobi office specializes in the field of environmental protection, the Kyiv U-24 Office can specialize in preventive measures to maintain peace.
I want to remind you of our peaceful mission in Afghanistan. When, at our own expense, we Ukrainians evacuated more than a thousand people from this country. And it was the hottest phase. But people needed help – and Ukraine came. Just like other states.
We evacuated people of different nationalities, different faiths. Afghans, citizens of European countries, USA, Canada. We did not distinguish who needs help, whether these are our people or not. We saved everyone.
Therefore, Ukraine has the necessary moral right to propose a reform of the world security system. We have proven that we help others not only in good times, but also in dark times.
And now we need decisions from the Security Council. For peace in Ukraine. If you do not know how to adopt this decision, you can do two things.
Remove Russia as an aggressor and a source of war from blocking decisions about its own aggression, its own war. And then do everything that can establish peace.
Ukraine needs peace. We need peace. Europe needs peace. The world needs peace.
Speech by the President of Ukraine in the Cortes Generales of Spain
I am addressing you with the hope that you will understand most of all our pain from the war and our hope for peace. Because for us in Ukraine now absolutely everything that is the basis of public life for you is under threat. We are one of the largest countries in Europe. And one of the most variegated. But united by democracy and respect for every person, for every community.
Russia came to our land with the war not yesterday and not the day before yesterday. It’s been a long time. We have been protecting our country from brutal, unprovoked aggression since 2014. First – the occupation of our Crimea. Then – the war in the Ukrainian Donbas. Now – already 41 days of full-scale invasion. The worst war in Europe since World War II.
I know that for your country, for Spain, it is important for a democratic system to be protected. For peace on the European continent to be guaranteed.
Imagine that people now – in Europe – live for weeks in basements to save lives. From shelling, from air bombs. Daily! 2022, April – and the reality in Ukraine is as if it’s April 1937. When the whole world learned the name of one of your cities – Guernica. Imagine that in ordinary cities, conditions can be artificially created where more than a hundred thousand people live for weeks without water, without food, without medicine.
What is even worse is that we still do not know how much longer the war will last until the world finally does everything necessary for peace.
Really powerful sanctions are needed. The most powerful. How can we allow Russian banks to generate profits while the Russian military tortures ordinary civilians to death in Ukrainian cities? How can European companies trade in a state that is deliberately destroying our people?
I know that many of your companies have already stopped financing the Russian military machine through taxes. I want to thank you, your citizens, and your government. I am grateful to these companies, to your entire state and society for the principled stance on sanctions.
But at the same time, I want to turn to some companies, such as Maxam, Porcelanosa, Sercobe and other companies – I think you know them better than I do – to stop doing business with Russia.
Now the fate of not only our state is being decided on the territory of Ukraine. But also the fate of the whole European project, of the values that united us all. Us with you. Of democracy that united us all. Of human rights, which have become a fundamental value for all of us.
I am grateful to your country for supporting common European decisions for peace. But all of us in Europe, all of us in the world need to do even more to force Russia to seek peace. So that Russia finally starts to respect international law.
What is needed for this?
Everyone in Europe must simply stop being afraid. Stop being weak. They have to become strong. Put values and democracy above the threats that Russia spreads.
I am sure fear is not about you. But I ask you to do everything so that other European countries do not have fear as well. You can help us. Help the world. Give us the weapons we need. And we appreciate that help, that weaponry – all that you have already given us. You can support further sanctions that are needed. And you can also destroy the fear of Russia wherever you can see it.
Because democracy should not fear. Freedom must be protected. Human rights must be above all calculations. The right to peace. The right to life. The right to happiness, to free development. The right to family security. The right to the future of children. The right to a decent old age of parents. The right to respect for every community. The right to be with you, Spain, together in a European family.
Prime Minister of Ukraine
The business lending during martial law was discussed during a meeting in Kyiv on April 5th by the Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal and representatives of state-owned banks and business associations in Ukraine.
D.Shmyhal emphasized that Kyiv and neighboring regions have already been liberated from the occupiers. Kyiv city is also returning to work.
“People need to be returned, and the bankers need to be returned to work. Officials made some trips to the regions, where they checked the activities of enterprises. They start their work. The sowing campaign is actively going on. The war continues. The military is doing its job heroically, and everyone else also has to do their job well,” said Denys Shmyhal, adding that banks should become the driving force behind the Ukrainian economy.
Read more: https://bit.ly/3J5gSyN
Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Dmytro Kuleba
To avert ‘new Buchas’, impose the mother of all sanctions: stop buying oil, gas, and coal from Russia. Stop financing Putin’s war machine. Russian economy — and its war — would stop in the matter of months. A few months of tightening your belts are worth thousands of saved lives.
The Bucha massacre must eliminate any hesitation and reluctance on the West to provide Ukraine with all necessary weapons, including aircraft, tanks, multiple rocket launchers, and armored vehicles, to protect our country and liberate it from the Russians.
The same with sanctions. If any of my colleagues from Europe or overseas try to tell me that any sanctions are inappropriate, too harsh, and should not be imposed, I will consider it as a betrayal of the Bucha victims and the civilians of other cities who have been murdered. The massacre in Bucha changes the game’s rules on how the West should continue to support Ukraine.
Read the full interview of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine for BBC Hardtalk: https://cutt.ly/qFqH4C0
Ministry of Foreign Affairs
OPERATIONAL SITUATION ON THE DIPLOMATIC FRONT
A critical day at the UN. Today, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy appealed to the UN Security Council. In his speech, the Head of State called for the United Nations’ transformation and took the initiative to convene a global conference in peaceful Kyiv.
️ Sanctions
The European Union imposes the fifth package of sanctions against Russia for its vicious war against Ukraine. New restrictions include a ban on imports of 4 billion euros a year from Russian coal and a ban on Russian ships entering EU ports.
The US Treasury Department has imposed sanctions against the Russian darknet market Hydra as part of a coordinated international effort to prevent the spread of cybercrime, dangerous drugs, and other illegal “offers” from this Russian site.
️ Global support
44 US congressmen sent a letter of appeal to US President Joe Biden calling for additional military assistance to Ukraine and provided a list of necessary equipment
The Chamber of Deputies of the Parliament of the Czech Republic unanimously passed a resolution condemning war crimes committed by the Russian military in Ukraine
Ambassador of the Republic of Estonia to Ukraine, Kaimo Kuusk, is preparing to return to Kyiv
️ Deputinization of the world
The United States, in coordination with Ukraine and other UN member states, will demand the suspension of Russia’s membership in the UN Human Rights Council
Italy, Spain, Sweden, Denmark, Latvia, Estonia, Slovenia, and Romania today announced the expulsion of dozens of Russian diplomats
European Union also declares 19 Russian diplomats non-grata for activities contrary to their diplomatic status
️ Russian criminals on the way to jail
The National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor’s Office, on March 5th, launched three new investigations into war crimes during the war in Ukraine involving persons covered by French protection and legislation
The Secretary-General of the Council of Europe, Maria Peichynovych-Burych, called for an urgent and complete investigation of war crimes committed in the Kyiv oblast
ECONOMY
National Bank of Ukraine
ENERGY
Ministry of energy of Ukraine
Information on energy supply in Ukraine as of April 5
Over the past 24 hours, electricity supply to more than 123,7 thousand consumers has been restored.
In particular, in Chernihiv region – 100 thousand consumers (data for the past two days), in Zaporizhzhya – 8,5 thousand, in Donetsk – more than 4,6 thousand, in Kyiv – 4,1 thousand, in Sumy – almost 4 thousand, in Kharkiv – 1,5 thousand, Luhansk – 500, Mykolayiv – 370 consumers.
Gas supply was restored to 832 consumers.
As of April 5, more than 1,245 settlements in Ukraine remain without electricity, in total more than 759,3 thousand consumers.
More than 334 000 consumers remain without gas supply.
Electricity
Ukraine’s energy system is balanced and stable. Frequency in the grid is maintained at the standard level of 50 Hz.
All types of power plants operate stably in the network, providing electricity to consumers.
Atomic generation
Ukraine’s existing nuclear power plants are producing electricity steadily. Their total current capacity provides the necessary amounts of electricity for the needs of the country.
Radiation, fire and environmental conditions at the industrial sites of nuclear power plants and adjacent territories have not changed and are within current standards.
Gas transmission system
The company maintains operational and technological control over the Ukrainian GTS, fulfills its obligations to transport gas to consumers.
Hydroenergy
All hydro power plants that are part of Ukrhydroenergo operate according to the dispatch schedule and fulfill their obligations to regulate the frequency and capacity of the country’s energy system. The stations are ready to manage spring floods.
Ukrenergo
Since the beginning of the invasion, cyber attacks on Ukrenergo have tripled since the pre-war period. In February-March, the number of attacks was the largest, their peaks – on the eve of the invasion and connection of Ukrainian power system to ENTSO-E. All of them were unsuccessful, but they continue.
“We understand perfectly well who is carrying out the attacks. At some point, our system was scanned, without hiding, from the IP address of one of the federal services of Russia. This is an attempt to hinder further integration into ENTSO-E,”- Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, Chairman of the Board of Ukrenergo, told Interfax Ukraine.
The fact that Ukrenergo did not suffer from cyber attacks is the result of persistent and professional work of our specialists, who in recent years have built an effective cyber defense system.
More in the full interview: https://bit.ly/3NSOVh, https://bit.ly/3r6VuTT
