Fighting is still raging in eastern and southern Ukraine, but a kind of “normalization” is taking place in Kyiv, where nearly two-thirds of the population has returned and where European leaders are stepping up support visits.
Franceinfo reviews the day’s events on Tuesday 10th May.
44 bodies found in the rubble of a building to the east
The bodies of 44 civilians were found in the rubble of a building destroyed in March in Izium, a Russian-held town in eastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv region. The bodies were found by Russia “in the rubble of a five-story building that was destroyed in the first decade of March,” the governor of the Kharkiv region told Telegram.
He did not specify under what conditions and by whom the bodies were collected, since the city of Izium and its surroundings were occupied by Russian troops, who took the city on April 1 after several weeks of fierce fighting. For its part, the prosecutor’s office of the Kharkiv region announced that it had opened an investigation into “violation of the laws and customs of war and premeditated murder” and stated that 14 bodies had been identified.
More than a thousand soldiers are still surrounded in the Azovstal Steelworks
In Mariupol, a martyr city in the south-east of the country, “more than a thousand” Ukrainian soldiers, including “hundreds of wounded”, are still in the Azovstal steel plant besieged by Russian troops, said Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk. “There are serious injuries that need to be evacuated urgently,” she said.
The civilians hiding with the combatants were evacuated last week with UN assistance.
Residents of Kyiv mostly returned
Nearly two-thirds of Kyiv’s 3.5 million residents have returned to the Ukrainian capital, which left most of its residents at the start of the Russian invasion on February 24, Mayor Vitali Klitschko announced. Even if there is still a curfew, roadblocks, “if these restrictions don’t deter you, you can actually come back,” added the city councilor, who has so far called on citizens to be patient.
Visits by executives to the capital and its suburbs will also continue. The head of German diplomacy Annalena Baerbock and her Dutch counterpart Wopke Hoekstra were in Ukraine on Tuesday, notably visiting towns on the outskirts of Kyiv, where Ukrainians accuse the Russians of massacring civilians during their occupation of that region in March.
Washington fears a Russian offensive in Transnistria
According to April Haines, head of the American intelligence service, Vladimir Putin does not want to limit his will to occupy the Donbass region of Ukraine alone, but wants to take the conflict to Transnistria, a region of Moldova that split off in 1990.
The Russian president, who is banking on weakening Western support for Ukraine, is preparing for a long conflict for which he is “likely” to impose martial law in Russia, Avril Haines told Congress. “We continue to believe that President Putin will only authorize the use of nuclear weapons if he sees an existential threat to the Russian state or regime,” she added.
A human toll is still not detectable
There is no overall assessment of the civilian casualties of the conflict. A few weeks ago, the Ukrainian authorities spoke of 2,000 deaths in Mariupol alone. And Ukrainian investigators claim to have identified “more than 8,000 cases” of alleged war crimes.
At the military level, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry estimates Russian losses at more than 25,000 men, 199 aircraft and 1,130 tanks since the invasion began on February 24. The Kremlin admitted “significant losses”.