The story goes on under the ad A senior US defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity under Pentagon ground rules, said Moscow could plan to occupy Mariupol as a springboard in the eastern Donbass region, where Russian troops may try to wrap the Ukrainian forces. The Russian military is increasingly trying to seize cities in this part of Ukraine, the Pentagon said, and forces withdrawing from the northern part of the country appear to be heading there. The focus in Mariupol came as Western officials tried to assess Russia’s next move, with troops withdrawing from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, diplomats preparing for more talks Friday and the war continuing to cut off oil supplies. gas around the world. There were also new claims that Russian President Vladimir Putin is further isolated from his advisers, with a picture of chaos emerging around Russia’s front lines and tensions at the Kremlin’s highest levels. The story goes on under the ad Jeremy Fleming, head of Britain’s intelligence service, said in a speech on Thursday that Russian troops had no morale and weapons and refused orders, sabotaging their own equipment and downing one of their own aircraft. In Washington, D.C., President Biden said Putin “appears to be isolated and there are indications that he has fired or placed some of his advisers under house arrest.” “But I do not want to put too much into it right now because we do not have that much hard data,” Biden said. Both Biden and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg expressed doubts Thursday about Russia’s claim that it was withdrawing from the area around Kyiv, with Stoltenberg saying Moscow seemed to have lied about its intentions in the past. redeploys troops for new attacks. The story goes on under the ad “We can only judge Russia for its actions, not for its words,” he told a news conference in Brussels. “According to our information, the Russian units are not withdrawn but are being repositioned.” The head of Ukraine’s energy ministry said Russian troops were withdrawing from what he described as the “main section” of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, which was occupied by Russian forces in February shortly after the outbreak of war. However, German Foreign Minister Galushchenko noted that some troops remained in the area and warned that “no one can predict their next steps”. Energoatom, Ukraine’s state-owned atomic energy company, has said Russian forces are handing over Chernobyl to Ukrainian authorities and withdrawing troops. In a statement to the Telegram, the company shared a letter in which Russian and Ukrainian forces allegedly agreed to “transfer the protection” of the site. The claims could not be independently verified. The story goes on under the ad The Pentagon said Thursday that it was “unclear” about the accuracy of unconfirmed reports that Russian troops leaving the Chernobyl nuclear power plant had been exposed to high levels of radioactivity and showed signs of illness. Biden’s statements about Putin came after he announced that he had approved the release of an average of 1 million barrels per day from the Strategic Oil Reserve for the next six months as a “wartime bridge” until US production increased later this year. The finance ministry, meanwhile, has revealed new sanctions on Russia’s technology sector, focusing on an area that allows Moscow to acquire critical technology for its military, including a company that is Russia’s largest microchip maker. The story goes on under the ad “We will continue to target Putin’s war machine with sanctions from every corner until this absurd war of choice is over,” Finance Minister Janet L. Glenn said in a statement. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peshkov has denied allegations that the Russian leader’s advisers misled him about invading Ukraine. “They do not understand President Putin,” he told Western government and intelligence officials, who made the allegations on Wednesday. “They do not understand the decision-making mechanism and they do not understand our work style.” The story goes on under the ad However, French, German and British officials are rejecting Russian demands to pay for gas supplies in Russian rubles. Speaking at a joint news conference later in the day, German Finance Minister Christian Lindner and his French counterpart Bruno Lemmerre said they would continue to pay in euros. A spokesman for British Prime Minister Boris Johnson told reporters that the payment in rubles “is not something we will try to do,” Reuters reported. The devastation caused by the five-week war showed no signs of ending. The death toll rose to 20 from a Russian rocket attack on Tuesday at the regional headquarters of the regional government in the southern city of Mykolaiv, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said. The story goes on under the ad In a Facebook post on Thursday, the service said rescuers had removed 19 bodies from the scene and that one person had died in the intensive care unit. Dozens of others were injured. Drone footage released on March 30, along with videos from 2021, highlighted the disaster in Mariupol. (Video: Storyblocks / Telegram, Photo: Storyblocks / Telegram) The drone video, released Wednesday and verified by the Washington Post, shows widespread destruction in Mariupol. The video, which compared recent images with footage from 2021, shows strong contrast before and after the siege, including the Mariupol Drama Theater that was bombed two weeks ago. The devastation in the city has been compared to the siege of Aleppo in 2016, when Russian forces helped Syrian President Bashar al-Assad crush rebels in an eight-month campaign that included the use of cluster munitions, chemical weapons and other banned weapons. in addition to heavy bombardment and conventional air raids. The story goes on under the ad Colonel General Mikhail Mizinchev, the Russian three-star general who led the forces in Syria, has been recognized as the architect of the catastrophic siege of Mariupol and has been given a new nickname: the butcher of Mariupol. Ukrainian officials have accused him of bombing a maternity hospital, the Drama Theater and other buildings in the port city and have vowed to see him tried for war crimes in The Hague. “Remember him,” Oleksandra Matviichuk, head of the Center for Civil Liberties in Ukraine, recently wrote on Twitter over a photo of the 59-year-old general, a man with closed gray hair and blue eyes. “This is Mikhail Mizinchev. It leads the siege of Mariupol “. The thousands of displaced people from Mariupol will be transferred to the Ukrainian-controlled city of Zaporizhzhia. By Thursday afternoon, 45 buses had arrived in the area to transport people, according to local officials. Neither the Russians nor the Ukrainians have specified when the ceasefire and the humanitarian corridor will end, but Ukraine has said its troops “will guarantee a full ceasefire.” A spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said its teams would travel by motorcade on Friday “to facilitate the safe passage of civilians out of Mariupol”. But the exact status of the escort was uncertain late Thursday. A UN official said the group had been unable to reach Mariupol and other areas in dire need “despite extensive efforts”. Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine Iryna Vereshchuk told the Telegram that more than 30 buses remained at the entrance of the city waiting to pick up people and transport them to Zaporizhzhia. Despite the local ceasefire, part of the convoy was shot Thursday afternoon on its way to the Russian city of Berdyansk as a convoy of buses approached a checkpoint, damaging at least one vehicle, according to Tetiana Ignatenkova, a spokeswoman for the regional administration. of Donetsk. The country’s previous humanitarian corridors have also been fragile, with each side accusing the other of violating the truce and obstructing supplies. Since the beginning of the conflict, 80,000 residents have been evacuated from Mariupol by bus and private transport, according to the local government. Ukraine will resume peace talks with Russia online on Friday, a senior Ukrainian diplomat who is taking part in the talks on his Telegram channel said after a test run in the talks in Istanbul on Tuesday. The diplomat, David Arahamia, said Ukraine had stressed the need for a meeting between Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at a venue that would not be in Belarus or Russia. However, Russian officials declined, saying the parties must first work out a more coherent draft agreement, he said. Ukrainian officials have said that any peace agreement should be signed by the two leaders. The two sides are exploring ways for Ukraine to become a neutral country in the context of a broader peace agreement. Ukrainian officials have called for a ceasefire and the withdrawal of Russian troops from the border on February 23 – a day before Russia began its invasion, Arakhamia said. The talks were met with skepticism by Ukrainian and Western officials. Ukrainian lawmaker Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze, who visited Washington, DC, this week as part of a parliamentary delegation, repeatedly said Putin was using the talks as a smokescreen to gain time to reorganize his forces in Ukraine. “It’s difficult to negotiate with someone when they have a gun [pointed] in your head, “she said in an interview with Canadian Broadcasting Corp. Speaking to reporters on CNN on Wednesday, she said Putin was “sending false, misleading messages” to the world. Bennett reported from the Dnipro region of Ukraine. Brittany Shammas, William Branigin, Sarah Cahlan, Jeff Stein, Meryl Kornfield and Hannah Knowles in Washington, Andrew Jeong in Seoul, Kim Bellware in …
