A large proportion of new Russian infantry units are likely to be deployed with MT-LB armored vehicles taken from long-term storage as their primary transport, Britain’s Ministry of Defense said in a regular bulletin on Twitter. The release comes as Ukrainian defenders battled Saturday to contain Russian forces on several fronts, officials said. A rocket strike in the northeastern city of Kharkiv wounded three civilians, its governor said, adding that militants repelled two Russian attacks near Dementiivka, a town located between the city and the border with Russia. Russia’s defense ministry said its forces hit two “foreign mercenary bases deployed near Kharkiv”. Rescuers work on a house destroyed by a Russian airstrike in the northeastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv on Saturday. (Evgeniy Maloletka/The Associated Press) Southeast of Kharkiv, attacks continued in Luhansk and Donetsk. These two provinces, parts of which were held by pro-Russian separatists before the conflict began in February, make up the eastern industrial region of Donbass. Luhansk Governor Serhiy Gaidai told Telegram that Russian forces were “firing on the entire front line,” although a subsequent Ukrainian counterattack that hit weapons and ammunition depots forced Moscow to halt its offensive. Donetsk regional governor Pavlo Kirilenko told the Telegram messaging service that a Russian missile hit Druzkivka, a town behind the front line, and reported shelling of other population centers. Russia, which claimed control of the entire Luhansk province last weekend, denies targeting civilians. Since Russia, which has also seized a large swath of territory in southern Ukraine, launched what it calls a “special operation” to demilitarize Ukraine on February 24, cities have been bombed to rubble, thousands killed and millions displaced. Ukraine and its Western allies say Russia is engaging in an unprovoked land grab.
Zelensky fires many ambassadors
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky fired several of Kiev’s top envoys abroad. In a decree posted on the presidential website, Zelenskiy gave no reason for firing ambassadors to Germany, India, the Czech Republic, Norway and Hungary. Zelensky urged his diplomats to rally international support and high-tech weapons to slow Russia’s advance. Today, Minister Joly announced that Canada intends to impose further sanctions in relation to Russia’s illegal and unjustified invasion of Ukraine. Read more: pic.twitter.com/6Dm4VHg3Gv —@CanadaFP US President Joe Biden on Friday signed an arms package for Ukraine worth up to US$400 million, including four additional High Mobility Artillery Missile Systems (HIMARS). Zelensky said that these equipments were priority needs. In response, the Russian embassy in Washington said the United States wanted to “prolong the conflict at any cost.”
China-US clashes at the G20
On Saturday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, urging the international community to join forces to condemn Russian aggression, told reporters he had raised concerns with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi about Beijing’s alignment with Moscow. The pair had more than five hours of talks on the sidelines of the G20 foreign ministers’ meeting on the Indonesian island of Bali. On Friday, Russia’s Sergei Lavrov walked out of a meeting there, denouncing the West for “frantic criticism”. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, right, and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi appear at a G20 meeting in Bali, Indonesia, on Saturday. (Stefani Reynolds/Pool/The Associated Press) China’s foreign ministry said, without elaborating, that Wang and Blinken discussed “the Ukraine issue.” It also quoted Wang as saying that Sino-US relations are in danger of drifting further, with many people believing that “the United States is suffering from an increasingly serious crisis of ‘cineophobia’.” Shortly before the Russian invasion, Beijing and Moscow announced a “borderless” cooperation, although US officials said they had not seen China evading US sanctions on Russia or supplying it with military equipment.
