Ukraine forces say the recent Crimea drone attack that caused oil tankers fires is the first of their Spring Offensive….
The Pope is trying to get a Secret Peace settlement between Ukraine and Russia…
Russia keeps changing military leaders. for the Ukraine operation…
The Wagner Group leader is desperate for more ammo…..
Its leader say the Ukraine Spring Offense IS coming soon….
Russian commanders are having disciple problems with soliders refusing to fight…..
Pelosi thought he trip to the Ukraine last year WAS very dangerous…..
An attack on an oil depot in Russian-occupied Crimea that sparked a huge fire and sent a plume of black smoke billowing into the sky was part of Ukraine’s preparations for a counteroffensive, a Ukrainian military spokeswoman said on Sunday.
The fire early Saturday in the city of Sevastopol, the home to the Russian Navy’s Black Sea Fleet, is the latest example of what looks to be the next phase of a conflict that has for months been marked by bitter fighting, crawling advances and deadly shelling along the front line and across the border between the two countries.
The depot fire, according to the spokeswoman for Ukraine’s southern command, Natalia Humeniuk, is part of preparations for “the broad, full-scale offensive that everyone expects.”…..
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Pope Francis said on Sunday that the Vatican was involved in a secret “mission” to stop the war between Russia and Ukraine and that it would do “all that is humanly possible” to return children taken from Ukraine to Russia and reunite families.
The pope’s remarks to reporters aboard the papal plane returning from a three-day trip to Budapest did not specify what the “not yet public” mission entailed. But Francis said he had privately discussed the situation with both Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary and with the representative of the Russian Orthodox Church in Budapest, Metropolitan Hilarion.
“In these meetings we did not just talk about Little Red Riding Hood,” Francis said. “We spoke of all these things. Everyone is interested in the road to peace.”
Though Mr. Orban leads a country that is a member of both NATO and the European Union, his position on the war has often been at odds with the rest of Europe. He has opposed sending military aid to Ukraine and imposing international sanctions against Russia….
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Here’s the latest on the war and its ripple effects across the globe.
- A Ukrainian military intelligence official described the Crimean incident as “God’s punishment” for a Russian strike on an apartment building Friday that killed many civilians. Andriy Yusov said the Saturday attack destroyed more than 10 fuel tanks housing some 40,000 tons of oil intended for Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.
- Four people were killed by strikes in the Russian region of Bryansk, regional governor Alexander Bogomaz said in a Telegram post. Bogomaz blamed Ukraine for the strikes against the village of Suzemka, which he said also injured two people. Ukrainian officials did not publicly comment, and The Washington Post could not independently verify Bogomaz’s claim. The region of Bryansk borders Belarus to the west and Ukraine to the south.
- President Biden said he is “working like hell” to bring home Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, whom Russian authorities detained and accused of espionage. Biden in his remarks at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner promised Gershkovich’s family, present in the audience, to work to secure the journalist’s release from prison in Moscow, where the State Department says he is being wrongfully detained. “Evan went to report in Russia to shed light on the darkness that you all escaped from years ago. Absolute courage,” Biden said. “We all stand with you.”
- The Russian Defense Ministry has appointed a new military logistics leader, ostensibly ousting the general known as the “butcher of Mariupol.” Col. Gen. Aleksey Kuzmenkov is the new deputy defense minister in charge of combat service support, the ministry announcedSunday. It did not address where Col. Gen. Mikhail Mizintsev, who had held the post since September, may be moved. Ukrainian officials and activists accused Mizintsev of orchestrating a brutal siege that killed thousands of civilians and razed residential buildings in Mariupol last year.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said six children were among at least 23 people killed in the Russian strike on a residential apartment building Friday in Uman, a city in central Ukraine far from the front lines. “May their memory be bright,” he said in his nightly address. Funerals were held Sunday for some of the victims, the Associated Press reported.
- Wagner Group founder Yevgeniy Prigozhin reportedly threatened to withdraw his mercenaries from the besieged city of Bakhmut, which Kyiv and Moscow have been fighting over for months. In an interview with a Russian war blogger posted on Telegram, Prigozhin said his fighters will need to “withdraw in an organized manner or stay and die.” Analysts at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) think tank said his remarks are probably intended to secure more ammunition from the Kremlin. Prigozhin also predicted that Kyiv will launch its counteroffensive by mid-May.
- One person was killed and another injured in Saturday strikes against the southeastern Ukrainian city of Kherson, authorities there said Sunday. Russian forces shelled the city twice and settlements around the region 27 times, the authorities said. Kherson is one of four Ukrainian regions that Russia illegally claimed to have annexed last year, even though its forces do not control the entire territory.
- Since the fall, Russian commanders have used “increasingly draconian initiatives to improve discipline” among their forces, Britain’s Defense Ministry said Sunday. This includes detaining soldiers who break the rules in “improvised cells consisting of holes in the ground covered with a metal grille,” called “Zindans,” the ministry said. This stricter stance on even misdemeanors marks a change in approach, as “in the early months of the war, many Russian commanders took a relatively light touch in enforcing discipline, allowing those who refused to soldier to quietly return home,” it added.
- “The likelihood of further missile and airstrikes across Ukraine remains quite high,” the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said as fighting continues, particularly in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine. This includes Bakhmut, where Russian forces continued Saturday to launch offensive operations, it said. ISW analysts wrote that “Russian forces made limited gains in Bakhmut on April 29” in the southwestern and northwestern parts of the city.
- Russia threatened to retaliate against Poland after Warsaw authorities took over a building used as a school by the children of Russian diplomats. Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski said that the building belongs to the city and that the move to repossess it is based on an order from Polish courts and follows a years-long dispute with Moscow. Russia’s Foreign Ministry called it “a blatant violation of the Vienna Convention of 1961” and warned of a “harsh reaction and consequences for the Polish authorities and Poland’s interests in Russia.”
- Former German chancellor Angela Merkel defended her approach to Russia and Ukraine in an onstage interview with the German newspaper Die Zeit. Merkel led Germany from 2005 to 2021 and has been criticized for deepening her country’s ties with Russia during that time. In the interview, she stood by her efforts to push for an agreement between Russia and Ukraine in 2014 over the Donbas region. She said diplomacy was necessary and should be considered to end the war.
- Pope Francis said the Vatican is involved in a secret Ukraine peace mission, Reuters reported. “I think that peace is always made by opening channels. You can never achieve peace through closure,” the pope told reporters on a flight back from a three-day trip to Hungary. During the trip, he called for more European unity to end the war in Ukraine by opening doors to migrants and those in need. He also said he met with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
- Former U.S. House speaker Nancy Pelosi said she and members of a U.S. delegation who visited Ukraine a few months after Russia’s invasion “thought we could die” during the trip. “It was very, it was dangerous,” Pelosi told the Associated Press in an interview. Pelosi also said she “would have hoped” that the war “would have been over by now” and said that Ukraine must emerge victorious for the sake of democracy. “We must win. We must bring this to a positive conclusion — for the people of Ukraine and for our country,” she told the AP….