Ukrainians flee Russian advance as footage shows decimated village

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Ukrainians flee Russian advance as footage shows decimated village.

Fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces has decimated the village of Ocheretyne in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region.

Drone footage obtained by AP shows most houses and apartment buildings in Ocheretyne damaged beyond repair. Not a single person is seen in the clip.

Moscow's army has launched a costly - but creeping - advance in the area, pounding Kyiv’s depleted forces with artillery, drones and bombs.

Critical Ukrainian shortages of equipment from the West, especially the US, have "likely helped" Russian forces on the battlefield, according to the Institute for the Study of War.

Kyiv has admitted that Russia has gained a “foothold” in Ocheretyne, which had a population of about 3,000 before the war. Fighting continues, however.

Residents have scrambled to flee the village. One was a 98-year-old woman who walked almost 10 kilometres alone last week, wearing a pair of slippers and supported by a cane, until she reached the Ukrainian front lines.

Strikes in Kharkiv

Meanwhile, Russia has ramped up attacks on Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, in an attempt to hammer the region's energy infrastructure and terrorise its 1.3 million inhabitants.

Dr Jade McGlynn, Research Fellow in War Studies at King's College London, previously told Euronews that behind Moscow' "terror" campaign lies a clear objective.

"The ultimate intention is to break the will of the population so that they will at some point give in and accept Russia," she explained, claiming it was personally "directed" by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"Putin believes the West will give up and Ukrainians will just be grateful for an end to the terror."

Four people were wounded and a two-story civilian building was damaged and set ablaze overnight after Russian forces struck Kharkiv, in northeastern Ukraine, with exploding drones, regional governor Oleh Syniehubov said on Saturday.

The four, including a 13-year-old, were hurt by falling debris, he said on the Telegram messaging app.

Ukrainian forces hit Russian-held areas

Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed early on Saturday that its forces overnight shot down four US-provided long-range ATACMS missiles over the Crimean Peninsula, illegally annexed by Moscow in 2014.

The ministry did not provide further details.

Ukraine has recently begun using the missiles, provided secretly by Washington, to hit Russian-held areas.

A military airfield in Crimea and in another area east of the occupied city of Berdyansk have been hit, according to US officials.

Long sought by Ukrainian leaders, the new missiles give Ukraine nearly double the striking distance - up to 300 kilometres - than it had with the mid-range version of the weapons it received from the US last October.

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Ukraine marks its third Easter at war as it comes under fire from Russian drones and troops

An Ukrainian serviceman of the 72nd Separate Mechanized Brigade, lights candles during a Christian Orthodox Easter religious service, in Donetsk region, Ukraine, Saturday, May 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

An Ukrainian serviceman of the 72nd Separate Mechanized Brigade, lights candles during a Christian Orthodox Easter religious service, in Donetsk region, Ukraine, Saturday, May 4, 2024.

As Ukraine marked its third Easter at war, Russia on Sunday launched a barrage of drones concentrated in Ukraine’s east, wounding more than a dozen people, and claimed its troops took control of a village they had been targeting.

Ukraine’s air force said that Russia had launched 24 Shahed drones overnight, of which 23 were shot down.

Six people, including a child, were wounded in a drone strike in the eastern Kharkiv region, regional Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said. Fourteen more were wounded in an airstrike Sunday afternoon on the Kharkiv regional capital, also called Kharkiv, the regional prosecutor’s office said. Syniehubov said the city was attacked by an aerial bomb.

Fires broke out when debris from drones that were shot down fell on buildings in the neighboring Dnipropetrovsk region. No casualties were reported.

The Russian Ministry of Defense announced Sunday that its troops had taken control of the village of Ocheretyne, which has been in the crosshairs of Russian forces in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine. Drone footage obtained by The Associated Press showed the village battered by fighting. Not a single person is seen in the footage obtained late Friday, and no building in Ocheretyne appears to have been left untouched by the fighting.

Officials in Kyiv urged residents to follow Orthodox Easter services online due to safety concerns. Serhiy Popko, head of the Kyiv city administration, warned that “even on such bright days of celebration, we can expect evil deeds from the aggressor.”

In his Easter address, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called on Ukrainians to be “united in one common prayer.”

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In a video filmed in front of Kyiv’s Saint Sophia Cathedral, wearing a traditional Vyshyvanka embroidered shirt, Zelenskyy said that God “has a chevron with the Ukrainian flag on his shoulder.” With “such an ally,” Zelenskyy said, “life will definitely win over death.”

A majority of Ukrainians identify as Orthodox Christians, though the church is divided. Many belong to the independent Orthodox Church of Ukraine. The rival Ukrainian Orthodox Church was loyal to the patriarch in Moscow until splitting from Russia after the 2022 invasion and is viewed with suspicion by many Ukrainians.

In Moscow, worshippers including President Vladimir Putin packed Moscow’s landmark Christ the Savior Cathedral late Saturday for a nighttime Easter service led by Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox Church and an outspoken supporter of the Kremlin.

Eastern Orthodox Christians usually celebrate Easter later than Catholic and Protestant churches, because they use a different method of calculating the date for the holy day that marks Christ’s resurrection.

Russia puts Ukrainian President Zelenskyy on its wanted list

 Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy inspects the fortification lines in Kharkiv region, Ukraine,

Russia has put Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on its wanted list, Russian state media reported Saturday, citing the interior ministry’s database.

As of Saturday afternoon, both Zelenskyy and his predecessor, Petro Poroshenko, featured on the ministry's list of people wanted on unspecified criminal charges. The commander of Ukraine's ground forces, Gen. Oleksandr Pavlyuk, was also on the list.

Russian officials did not immediately clarify the allegations against any of the men. Mediazona, an independent Russian news outlet, claimed Saturday that both Zelenskyy and Poroshenko had been listed since at least late February.

In an online statement published that same day, Ukraine’s foreign ministry dismissed the reports of Zelenskyy’s inclusion as evidence of “the desperation of the Russian state machine and propaganda.”

Russia's wanted list also includes scores of officials and lawmakers from Ukraine and NATO countries. Among them is Kaja Kallas, the prime minister of NATO and EU member Estonia, who has fiercely advocated for increased military aid to Kyiv and stronger sanctions against Moscow.

Russian officials in February said that Kallas is wanted because of Tallinn’s efforts to remove Soviet-era monuments to Red Army soldiers in the Baltic nation, in a belated purge of what many consider symbols of past oppression.

Fellow NATO members Latvia, Lithuania and Poland have also pulled down monuments that are widely seen as an unwanted legacy of the Soviet occupation of those countries.

Russia has laws criminalizing the “rehabilitation of Nazism” that include punishing the “desecration” of war memorials.

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Also on Russia’s list are cabinet ministers from Estonia and Lithuania, as well as the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor who last year prepared a warrant for President Vladimir Putin on war crimes charges. Moscow has also charged the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov, with what it deems “terrorist” activities, including Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian infrastructure.

The Kremlin has repeatedly sought to link Ukraine’s leaders to Nazism, even though the country has a democratically elected Jewish president who lost relatives in the Holocaust, and despite the aim of many Ukrainians to strengthen the country’s democracy, reduce corruption and move closer to the West.

Moscow named “de-Nazification, de-militarization and a neutral status” of Ukraine as the key goals of what it insists on calling a “special military operation” against its southern neighbor. The claim of “de-Nazification” refers to Russia’s false assertions that Ukraine’s government is heavily influenced by radical nationalist and neo-Nazi groups - an allegation derided by Kyiv and its Western allies.

The Holocaust, World War II and Nazism have been important tools for Putin in his bid to legitimize Russia’s war in Ukraine. World War II, in which the Soviet Union lost an estimated 27 million people, is a linchpin of Russia’s national identity, and officials bristle at any questioning of the USSR’s role.

Some historians say this has been coupled with an attempt by Russia to retool certain historical truths from the war. They say Russia has tried to magnify the Soviet role in defeating the Nazis while playing down any collaboration by Soviet citizens in the persecution of Jews, along with allegations of crimes by Red Army soldiers against civilians in Eastern Europe.

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