Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed that the first M1 Abrams tanks are “already in Ukraine.” The tanks will “reinforce our actions against the occupiers. And it will be a significant reinforcement,” he said late Monday in his nightly address. President Biden committed in January to sending 31 of the advanced battle tanks. U.S. military officials have said the deliveries will be gradual, but they expect them all to arrive in the coming weeks.
Ukraine said it killed Adm. Viktor Sokolov, the commander of the Black Sea Fleet, in an attack on the Fleet’s headquarters in Sevastopol last week. In refutation of that claim, Russia’s Defense Ministry on Tuesday released footage that appeared to show Sokolov alive, attending by video link a meeting chaired by Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. The Washington Post did not detect any signs of obvious manipulation in the video but could not independently verify its authenticity.
Some Ukrainian citizens have been tortured to death under Russian occupation, a U.N. panel reported Monday. “In some cases, torture was inflicted with such brutality that it caused the death of the victims,” Erik Mose, chairman of the Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine, told the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva. Mose, a Norwegian judge with experience in international human rights, also said Russian soldiers have “raped and committed sexual violence against women of ages ranging from 19 to 83 years” in Kherson, with family members often kept next door to hear the abuses. Russia did not respond to the commission’s requests for communication, Mose added.
The speaker of Canada’s House of Commons, Anthony Rota, resigned Tuesday after he honored a Ukrainian veteran who fought in a Nazi unit in Parliament last week. Calls for Rota’s resignation had piled up since he invited 98-year-old Yaroslav Hunka to President Zelensky’s address to Parliament on Friday. Zelensky is Jewish, and has relatives who were killed by the Nazis. Rota called Hunka a “hero,” but over the weekend, several Jewish groups pointed out that Hunka had been a member of a Waffen-SS unit made up of ethnic Ukrainians. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called the incident “deeply embarrassing.”
At least 504 children have been killed in Ukraine since Russia’s invasion began, according to data from Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office released Tuesday. It added that more than 1,125 children have been injured to “various degrees of severity” since the war started in February 2022. The United Nations has confirmedthat at least 9,614 civilians have been killed since the war began, with the toll incomplete and likely to be much higher. Children and young people have been affected by the war as schools and educational facilities closed or were damaged. Many are displaced with their family members because of the fighting.
