PMore than a month after the start of the offensive and while the prospect of conquering kyiv seemed to be waning, the Russian forces now ruled out taking the capital. Ukraine thus regains control of the kyiv region and Vladimir Putin reveals a new strategy. Less ambitious, the Kremlin now aims to deploy to the east and south of the country to strengthen its occupation of these territories, particularly in the Donbass and in the port city of Mariupol. But if the capital is liberated, the war is not over. From the field to the diplomatic front, from kyiv to Moscow via Brussels… Point summarizes, day after day, the Russian invasion.
Find, here, the daily account of the first month of the offensive.
- Sunday April 3: massacre of civilians in Boutcha
A new step in horror. The lifeless bodies of 410 civilians were discovered on Sunday in the territories of the kyiv region retaken in recent days from Russian troops by Ukrainian forces. Including about 300 corpses, buried in mass graves, in Boutcha, a suburb north-west of kyiv. Qualified by Ukraine as a “deliberate massacre”, these acts sparked outrage from the international community and calls for additional sanctions against Moscow. “I have learned of reports of massive abuses committed by Russian forces in Ukrainian towns that they occupied in recent weeks, in particular in the locality of Boutcha. I condemn with the greatest firmness such acts constituting, if they are confirmed, war crimes”, reacts the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jean-Yves Le Drian, in a press release. “We will work with our partners, the Ukrainian authorities and the competent international jurisdictions, in particular the International Criminal Court, to ensure that these acts do not go unpunished and that those responsible are tried and sentenced”, he adds.
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Saturday, April 2: Withdrawal of Russian forces to the east and south
Moscow announces, this Saturday, the “withdrawal” of its army from the regions of kyiv and Chernihiv, in the north of Ukraine, marking a new phase in the offensive initiated on February 24 by Vladimir Putin. The Ukrainian troops who “chased the enemy towards the border” would thus have liberated “more than thirty localities” around the capital, assures the entourage of President Volodymyr Zelensky. But “it is quite clear that Russia has chosen another priority tactic”, nuance Mykhaïlo Podoliak, one of his advisers on Telegram: it is for the Russian forces to “fold back towards the east and the south, to keep control of vast occupied territories and to gain a foothold there in a powerful way”, he specifies. In Mariupol, in particular, where some 160,000 people remain blocked and of which at least 5,000 inhabitants have been killed since the start of the offensive. But also, more broadly, on the entire eastern coast of the country, from Crimea to the pro-Russian separatist territories of Donbass.