The wife of the pro-Russian opposition leader Víktor Medvedchuk, Oksana Marchenko, has denounced that she does not know the whereabouts of her husband, after his arrest by the Ukrainian Security Service was announced this week.
“My husband’s whereabouts are unknown and that makes his legal defense and medical surveillance impossible,” Marchenko said at a press conference from Moscow.
According to Marchenko, her husband could be subjected to torture judging by the photographs released by the Ukrainian authorities after his arrest. “I ask to establish his whereabouts, cease the violence against him and allow access to a lawyer,” she said.
Let us remember that the Kremlin has already condemned the arrest of Medvedchuk, accused of treason and captured last Wednesday for trying to escape when he was under house arrest accused of high treason for revealing state secrets, having business in the annexed Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea and with the pro-Russian separatists in Donbas, work for Russia and have “strong ties” with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The Ukrainian general staff considers that the Russians are preparing a new offensive in eastern Ukraine and have observed a concentration of troops near the Donbass area for this purpose.
“There is a movement of units of the 36th Combined Arms Army of the Eastern Military District by rail from the Gomel region of the Republic of Belarus. The threat of missile attacks from the territory of Belarus against Ukrainian objects persists,” he explained. the Ukrainian General Staff in a statement.
“In the direction of Donetsk, the Russian army, supported by the air force and artillery, continues the offensive in certain directions. The main efforts are focused on establishing control over the settlements of Popasna, Rubizhne, Severodonetsk and Sloviansk” , the Ukrainian army warned in the document.
A Russian army shooting attack on evacuation buses in the Kharkiv region has left at least 7 civilians dead and 27 more wounded, according to the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office.
“On April 14, the Russian military fired on evacuation buses with civilians in the town of Borova. According to the first reports, seven people were killed and 27 were injured,” the prosecution posted on Telegram.
At this time, an investigation has already been opened for “violation of the laws and customs of war, associated with premeditated murder.”
Russia’s communications watchdog has blocked access to the Russian-language website of
The Moscow Timesa newspaper that has covered Russia for three decades.
The publication has denounced that Russian internet providers had already started to block its Russian-language site.
The Russian communications control body has not made any communication explaining the reasons for this decision.
The Ukrainian authorities have recorded heavy shelling by Russian troops in the Donetsk region.
The army fears that these attacks mean the beginning of a major offensive with the purpose of conquering Donbass.
The head of the regional administration, Pavlo Kyrilenko, has assured in his Telegram account that almost all towns and villages in the region have suffered attacks. “The Russians are destroying the Donetsk region. Almost all the inhabited areas along the front line are under attack by the Russian armed horde,” he has written.
Kyrylenko has specifically mentioned Marinka, who has been under constant fire almost since the beginning of the invasion.
According to Kyrilenko, in the latest attacks, at least 11 civilians have been killed, including a child, and three schools, a kindergarten, three administrative buildings, 13 residential blocks and 322 private houses have been damaged.
At the same time, the attacks against the port city of Mariúpol continue.
Russian Security Council Vice President Dmitry Medvedev has threatened to deploy nuclear weapons in the Baltic if Sweden and Finland join NATO.
“It will be necessary to reinforce the group of ground forces, the anti-aircraft defense, deploy important naval forces in the waters of the Gulf of Finland. And in that case it will no longer be possible to speak of a Baltic without nuclear weapons. The balance must be reestablished” , the high-ranking Kremlin official has written on his Telegram account.
Medvedev, former prime minister and president of Russia between 2008 and 2012, has stressed that for Moscow “it is not so important how many countries there are in NATO, 30 or 32”, but has emphasized that if Sweden and Finland join NATO, it will double the length of the land border between Russia and the Atlantic Alliance, so it will have to be strengthened.
The Central Bank of Russia has publicly recommended banks and non-financial companies not to distribute dividends in 2022.
“In view of the difficult economic situation, the Bank of Russia recommends refusing to pay dividends in 2022 to banks (…), as well as non-credit financial institutions,” it said in a statement.
The monetary entity has recalled that credit institutions are allowed to breach capital adequacy margins due to the current situation, but in any case they must “limit the payment of dividends and bonuses to management.”
Finance Minister Anton Siluanov has signaled that his department will propose abandoning the dividend policy by banks with respect to 2021 results, despite the fact that last year “was probably the most successful in recent times.” .
The Italian Foreign Minister, Luigi di Maio, has pointed out that “Italy does not have the elements to verify whether a genocide is taking place in Ukraine”, although he has affirmed that “the atrocities” committed by the Russian army “are under our eyes, like the deaths of children and the deaths of civilians.
Di Maio has declared that “through the European Union we will provide all the evidence at our disposal to verify if there have been war crimes in Ukraine, to verify all those responsible”, in an interview on the public radio station Radio Rai1.
“What we have seen in Bucha and Krematorsk and that unfortunately we will see in other places is atrocious, terrifying and we will have to bring those responsible to international justice,” added the foreign minister.
The minister has insisted on the need to continue with the humanitarian corridors, although he has confirmed that “Putin does not express intentions of peace and therefore it is necessary to maintain the process of sanctions against Russia”.
Russia has again warned of the negative consequences of the possible entry of Sweden and Finland into NATO.
“Naturally, the Swedish and Finnish authorities themselves have to decide, but they have to understand the consequences of this step for our bilateral relations and the European security architecture in general, which is now in crisis,” said the Foreign Affairs spokeswoman for Russia, Maria Zajarova.
Zajárova has indicated that the potential membership of the two Nordic republics in NATO “will hardly contribute to strengthening the international prestige of Sweden and Finland” who have been promoters of many “constructive and unifying initiatives” in the past.
“By entering the alliance, Stockholm and Helsinki will lose that opportunity,” he warned.
In addition, he assured that the measure will not help strengthen the national security of the two countries. “They will automatically find themselves in the front line of NATO. On the other hand, membership in NATO implies, in fact, the renunciation of part of the sovereignty in decision-making in the field of defense, as well as in politics. abroad,” he stated.
In recent days, Finland’s rapprochement with NATO, which could materialize with the country’s entry into the Alliance at the June summit, may lead Sweden to join the organization, something that was seen as unlikely a few weeks ago.
When the war in Ukraine began more than a month ago, the Swedish Prime Minister, the Social Democrat Magdalena Andersson, defended that Sweden was a country associated with NATO but not a member, considering that entry could further “destabilize” the situation.
However, the speed of Finland, where there is speculation that it will enter before the June summit, has caused the situation in Sweden to be reconsidered, so the parties must now study the new situation.
More than 1,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been captured by Russian forces during the war and taken to the territory of the Kremlin, as explained today by the president of the Russian Instruction Committee, Aleksandr Bastrikin, where they are interrogated.
In addition, Bastrikin has detailed that “another 15 commanders of the Ukrainian Armed Forces accused by Russia of “genocide of civilians in Donbass” have been identified and that Moscow has information on arms deliveries to Ukraine from 25 countries, including 21 from NATO.
On the other hand, the Russian senator, Andréi Klímov, has also commented that among the prisoners captured in Ukraine there are soldiers from the countries of the Atlantic Alliance, something that “we are going to make it public and there will be trials”.
This Thursday a new exchange of prisoners took place, where 30 Ukrainian citizens were released, 17 of them soldiers.
One of Ukraine’s key war facilities, the Ilyich metallurgical infrastructure in Mariupol, has been “completely liberated” by Russian forces and Donetsk separatist militias, Russia said in a statement.
At this plant, where some Ukrainian soldiers already surrendered on Wednesday, a total of 1,160 soldiers have surrendered, according to data provided by the Russian Defense Ministry, to which Ukraine replies that they are “much less”, in the words of the adviser. presidential Oleksiy Arestovych.
Ukrainian soldiers tried to force their way into the factory area to join the Azov Battalion, but the group was separated and “some” fell into Russian hands.
The Russian Ministry of Defense has assured this Friday that its soldiers have “liquidated” three dozen mercenaries from a private Polish military entity in the Kharkiv region, in eastern Ukraine.
“A detachment of mercenaries from the Polish private military entity was liquidated in the town of Izyums’ke, in the Kharkiv region,” military spokesman Igor Konashénkov said.
A total of 22 Turkish-owned cargo ships are currently stuck off the coast of Ukraine without the possibility of going to sea, Turkish Transport Minister Adil Karaismailoglu said on Friday.
“We have 22 ships waiting on the Ukrainian shores of the Black Sea, some flagged in Turkey. We have to get them out of there,” the minister told reporters.
In these ships, where 200 sailors worked and now only 90 remain due to the evacuation of the rest, merchandise such as cereals, sunflower oil, iron or similar goods are transported.
According to the head of Transport, on the Ukrainian coast there are approximately 100 cargo ships from various countries that cannot be mobilized due to the war.
The Kremlin has warned the United States that there could be “unforeseeable consequences” if arms continue to be supplied to Ukraine from Washington, the newspaper reported on Friday.
The Washington Post.
In the diplomatic note collected by the newspaper, Russia asks “the United States and its allies to stop the irresponsible militarization of Ukraine, which has unforeseeable consequences for regional and international security.”
Around 400 minors have lost their lives or been injured in the armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine so far, according to the devastating data collected by the International section of
The vanguard de la ONG Save the Children.
Along with the elderly, children are the ones who suffer the most from the physical and psychological consequences of war, with the aggravating circumstance that on many occasions they are not aware of what they are facing.
Of the more than 7 million infants in Ukraine, at least two-thirds have moved within or outside the country.
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