Russia reports complete capture of Mariupol.
There could be a prisoner swap by Ukrainian fighters for a close friend of Putin's.
News ticker.
Escalated
conflict
in Ukraine: After Mariupol, Ukraine fears that another city will be wiped out.
Meanwhile, civilians are said to have fallen again in Donetsk and Cherson.
Russia reports complete capture of Mariupol:
All fighters have surrendered, there could be a prisoner exchange with the pro-Russian politician Medvedchuk.
Ukrainian President Zelenskyy:
"Ukraine broke the backbone of the Russian army".
This
news ticker on the Ukraine war
is continuously updated.
Update from May 22,
6:51 a.m.: "The situation in Donbass is extremely difficult," said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at night.
The Russian army is trying to attack the cities of Sloviansk and Sievjerodonetsk in the east of the country.
"The Armed Forces of Ukraine are holding back this offensive."
Every day that "our defenders" thwart Russia's plans is a concrete contribution on the road to victory.
But Selenskyjs also warned: "We have to keep fighting."
During the night, the Ukrainian military reported ongoing fighting in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in the east of the country.
Nine attacks by Russian troops were repelled there on Saturday.
According to the situation report, Russia is deploying combat aircraft, rocket launchers and tanks along the entire front.
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Photo from May 17: destruction in the Donbass region
© Daniel Ceng Shou-Yi/ZUMA Press Wire/dpa
War in Ukraine: Kyiv reports more civilians killed
Update from May 21, 9:37 p.m .:
Ukraine has blamed Russia for the deaths of seven civilians in the part of the Donetsk region in the east of the country controlled by government troops.
This is what the governor of the region, Pavlo Kirilenko, wrote on Saturday in the Telegram news channel.
Three people were killed in Lyman alone.
The governor initially did not comment on the exact circumstances.
In addition, a total of seven people were injured.
This information could not be independently verified.
"Every war criminal will be punished," Kirilenko said.
In the Russian-occupied Cherson region in southern Ukraine, the local administration accused Ukraine of killing three civilians and injuring ten in the town of Biloserka on Saturday.
That too could not be checked.
The administration did not tell Telegram exactly what had happened.
Ukraine war: Prisoner exchange between Ukrainian fighters and Putin ally is discussed
Update from May 21, 7.47 p.m .:
According to statements by the prominent Russian foreign politician Leonid Slutzki, a possible exchange of the Ukrainian fighters captured in Mariupol for the pro-Russian politician Viktor Medvedchuk is under discussion.
"We will examine the possibility of replacing Medvedchuk with the Azov fighters," Slutsky said on Saturday, according to the Interfax agency.
The politician and oligarch Medvedchuk, who was arrested in mid-April, is considered the closest ally of Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin in Ukraine.
He is accused of high treason and embezzlement in Kyiv.
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The pro-Russian politician and oligarch Viktor Medvedchuk was arrested on April 12, according to Ukrainian sources (archive photo).
© IMAGO/Mikhail Japaridze / ITAR-TASS
Ukraine war: According to Zelenskyj, Ukraine is said to have "broke the backbone" of the Russian army
Update from May 21, 5:16 p.m .:
Despite the defeat in the port city of Mariupol, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is convinced that the Ukrainian army has “inflicted great damage” on Russia’s armed forces.
Ukraine "broke the backbone of the Russian army," Zelensky said in a television interview broadcast on Saturday.
"They won't be able to get back on their feet for the next few years," said the 44-year-old.
Shortly before, the last more than 2,400 Ukrainian defenders of the port city in the south-east of the country had surrendered and been taken prisoner by the Russians.
Russia had presented them in a video like "victory trophies" (see message from 3:52 p.m.).
Kyiv will get everything back, Zelenskyj emphasized in the TV interview on Saturday.
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President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy during a TV interview with the United News telethon on Saturday (May 21).
© IMAGO/Ukraine Presidency/Ukraine Presi/Zuma Wire
Russia parades Ukrainian prisoners of war from Mariupol like 'victory trophies'
Update from May 21, 3:52 p.m .:
The Russian Ministry of Defense shows the captured last Ukrainian defenders of Mariupol in a video like victory trophies.
In front of the backdrop of the Asovstal steelworks, the men with beards are lined up.
Their faces are bleached out after weeks without sun in the bunkers of the industrial zone.
The state television in Moscow raves about an "unprecedented operation" - to "liberate" the steel mill and the complete takeover of the strategically important port city.
The fall of the largely destroyed city of Mariupol is Ukraine's heaviest loss so far in the war that Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin began on February 24.
According to Moscow, since May 16, 2,439 Ukrainian soldiers have been taken prisoner by the Russians.
This information could not initially be verified independently.
Ukraine war: Russian border region of Kursk accuses Ukraine of daily attacks
Update from May 21, 1:59 p.m .:
The Russian border region of Kursk accuses Ukraine of shooting on their territory every day.
On Saturday, the Glushkovo region was attacked, Governor Roman Starovoit wrote in the Telegram news service.
He did not comment on possible victims.
In the past few days, Starovoit had already blamed the Ukrainians for the destruction in towns near the border.
Ukraine has not commented on the allegations.
Ukraine War: Focus of fighting in eastern Ukraine
Update from May 21, 12:45 p.m .:
The Ukrainian general staff continues to register a large number of Russian attacks in Ukraine and fears air strikes from neighboring Belarus.
According to the situation report on Saturday (May 21), the focus of the fighting is further east in Ukraine.
Eleven Russian attacks were repelled there and, among other things, eight Russian tanks were destroyed.
The artillery shelling of Ukrainian positions continues, it said.
In addition, ships of the Russian Navy are engaged in battles and reconnaissance in the Black and Azov Seas, the Ukrainian General Staff said.
Ukraine also sees itself threatened by Russia's ally Belarus, which is not officially a participant in the war.
The military also accuses the Russian occupiers of terror against the Ukrainian civilian population.
For example, they prevented people from fleeing from the occupied Cherson region to territory controlled by Ukraine.
Humanitarian corridors are also blocked so that no food and medicine can be brought into the area.
Elderly people, the sick and children were trapped there, it said.
Ukraine war: Putin's army apparently destroys large quantities of western weapons
Update from May 21, 11:30 a.m
.: According to Russia, Putin's troops have destroyed a large shipment of western weapons in north-western Ukraine.
The Russian army used "long-range, high-precision sea-based weapons" of the Kalibr type to destroy a "large batch of weapons and military equipment near the Malyn railway station in the Shotoymr region," the Russian Defense Ministry said.
Ukraine received the delivery from the “United States and European countries”.
They were intended for Ukrainian troops in eastern Ukraine's Donbass region, which has been partially controlled by pro-Russian separatists since 2014.
The fiercest fighting in Ukraine is currently taking place in the Donbass.
Ukraine war: "Want to reduce the area to rubble" - fears that another city will be wiped out
Update from May 21, 10:20 a.m .:
Ukraine fears a further advance of Russian troops after they have completely taken the port city of Mariupol and the Azov steel mill.
The Ukrainian military governor of the Luhansk region, Serhiy Hajday, reported massive fighting in the Donbass on Saturday.
For example, the eastern Ukrainian city of Sievjerodonetsk has been under fire for days, there are dead and injured.
“The Russians are wiping out Sieverodonetsk like Mariupol.
Fighting is going on in the suburbs of the city,” Hajdaj said on the Telegram news channel.
The governor complained of aerial bombardments in the region, and that Russia wanted to reduce the area to rubble.
At the same time, he dismissed statements by Russia's Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu that the Luhansk region was about to be completely captured as "nonsense".
Shoigu no longer has an overview of the situation of his own armed forces.
"The enemy does not stop conducting offensive operations in the eastern combat zone," the Ukrainian general staff wrote on Facebook on Saturday.
The aim of the attackers was "to gain total control of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions and to have a land corridor to the occupied Crimea".
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The Azovstal Steel Works in Mariupol, badly damaged by weeks of fierce fighting.
© imago-images
In the Luhansk region, only the cities of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk, separated by a river, are now controlled by Ukraine.
The Ukrainian governor of Luhansk, Serhiy Gajdaj, was nevertheless optimistic on Saturday: "Our troops are getting foreign weapons, rearming themselves, moving into new positions - and I believe that we can counterattack in June," he said.
Ukraine war: Selenskyj sees "absolute stupidity" over cultural center shelling
Update from May 21,
8:18 a.m .: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyj has blamed Russia for a rocket attack on a cultural center in the east of the country that injured eight.
An eleven-year-old child was also injured in the shelling in the city of Lozova in the Kharkiv region, Zelenskyy wrote on Friday evening in the Telegram news channel.
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A man searches for scrap metal in a shelled neighborhood of Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine.
© Bernat Armangue/AP/dpa
"The occupiers have identified culture, education and humanity as their enemies," Zelenskyy said.
Such attacks are "absolute stupidity" and "wickedness".
Zelenskyj published a video on his account that showed a rocket impact.
Then a huge cloud of smoke could be seen.
According to
the picture
, he was fired on by an airborne medium-range missile with a range of 600 kilometers.
Ukraine War: Russia reports complete capture of Mariupol
Update from May 21, 8:10 a.m.:
Russia has reported the complete capture of the Azov steel industrial complex in Mariupol.
Defense Minister Shoigu informed Putin about "the end of the mission and the complete liberation" of the steel mill and the strategically important port city in southeastern Ukraine, Igor Konashenkov, spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry, told Telegram on Friday.
Earlier, after weeks of bitter fighting, Ukrainian forces had given up defending the city.
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A destroyed steel plant in the port of Mariupol.
© Olga Maltseva/AFP
On Friday, "the last group of 531 fighters surrendered," the spokesman said.
A total of 2,439 "Nazis" from the Azov regiment and Ukrainian soldiers had surrendered since Monday.
"The factory's underground facilities, where militants hid, are now fully under the control of Russian forces."
The commander of the Azov regiment was taken out of the factory in a "special armored vehicle" to protect him from "the hatred of Mariupol residents and their desire to punish him," Konashenkov added.
The Azov Regiment is a former far-right unit that has now been integrated into the Ukrainian National Guard and is known for the bravery of its fighters.
Earlier on Friday, the last Ukrainian fighters in the industrial complex said they had received an order from Kyiv to stop defending the city.
The Ukrainian military leadership gave the order "to save the lives of the soldiers in our garrison," Azov commander Denys Prokopenko said in a video message.
Azov commander from Mariupol admits capitulation for the first time - message from Moscow follows later
Update from May 20, 9:04 p.m .:
According to Russian information, all fighters in the besieged Azovstal steelworks in the Ukrainian port of Mariupol have now surrendered.
The Ministry of Defense in Moscow announced on Friday evening that the industrial zone is now completely under Russian control.
A total of 2,439 Ukrainian soldiers have been taken prisoner by the Russians since May 16.
Update from May 20, 4:41 p.m .:
Honor for a suspected war criminal after his death: Russian President Vladimir Putin, who had recently shown himself confident in winning the Ukraine war, awarded the separatist leader Arsen Pavlov, who was killed in 2016, with the Order of Bravery.
A decree on the posthumous award was published in Russia's official law database.
The human rights organization Amnesty International had accused Pavlov of killing at least one Ukrainian prisoner of war during the conflict in eastern Ukraine under the name "Motorola".
Pavlov was killed in a bomb attack.
The Russian himself claimed in front of journalists that he shot at least 15 captured Ukrainian soldiers.
According to the media, the man fled to the Donbass region in April 2014 to avoid prosecution for car theft and drunk driving in Russia.
There he was considered one of the most dangerous and bloodiest militia leaders in the pro-Russian uprisings.
War in Ukraine: Azov commander publicly admits surrender for the first time
Update from May 20, 2:42 p.m.:
The Ukrainian military has apparently ordered the remaining fighters of the Azov regiment at the Mariupol steel plant to abandon the city's defenses.
The military leadership gave the order "to save the lives of the soldiers of our garrison and to stop defending the city," commander Denys Prokopenko said in a video released on Friday.
Work is now being done to bring the fallen soldiers out of the facility.
All the wounded were evacuated and only the "killed heroes" remained, the commander said.
Ukraine-Russia News: Heavy airstrikes on the front line
Update from May 20, 1:48 p.m .:
According to their own statements, the Russian armed forces have concentrated their air attacks on the near-front rear of Ukraine.
The spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry, Igor Konashenkov, reported on Friday of attacks on the towns of Bakhmut, Berestove, Kostyantynivka, Maslyakivka, Pokrovske, Soledar in the Donetsk region and the city of Chuhuiv in the Kharkiv region.
Four enemy command posts and seven depots are said to have been destroyed by Russian surface-to-air missiles.
Russia's missile forces and artillery, in turn, destroyed 3 depots and 24 artillery and rocket launcher positions, Konashenkov said.
In addition, according to him, army aviation and tactical air force liquidated 280 soldiers and 59 armored military vehicles.
This information could not be verified independently.
Ukraine War: Russia reports near-total capture of Luhansk region
Update from May 20, 1:04 p.m .:
According to information from Moscow, the Russian troops are still advancing in the Donbass.
"The liberation of the Luhansk People's Republic is nearing completion," Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said at a ministry meeting.
Before invading Ukraine, Russia recognized the separatist areas in the east of the neighboring country, the "Luhansk People's Republic" and the "Donetsk People's Republic", as sovereign states.
While Ukraine is talking about a bloody invasion and occupation by Russia, Russia is talking about "liberating" the regions from nationalists.
Shoigu also informed that Ukrainian fighters were still holding the fort at the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol.
"The blockade of Azovstal continues," Shoigu said.
Russia wants to build twelve new military bases in the west of the country - Shoigu blames NATO and the USA
Update from May 20, 11:50 a.m .:
Russia wants to build twelve new military bases in the west of the country in response to the planned NATO expansion with Sweden and Finland.
This was announced by Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu on Friday.
He said, according to Russian news agencies, "Twelve military bases and units will be set up in the Western Military District by the end of the year."
Shoigu denounced "the increase in military threats on the Russian borders" and accused the US and NATO.
Bucha: Videos are supposed to prove war crimes in the Kyiv suburbs by Russian soldiers
First report from May 20, 2022:
Bucha - The suspicion that Russian fighters are responsible for the murder of hundreds of defenseless civilians in the Kiev suburbs in the escalating Ukraine conflict may be confirmed.
The alleged war crimes in Bucha and Irpin, northwest of the capital, had caused horror around the world.
Russian politicians and officials have consistently denied the killings.
However , the
New York Times
has now published videos purporting to show executions of Ukrainian civilians by Russian soldiers.
You can see how two soldiers drive eight men - one of them wearing a light blue sweater - through a street at gunpoint.
A voice calls out, "Go right, bitch."
The recordings are said to have been made on March 4, 2022 by a security camera and a witness in a nearby house in Bucha.
Other witnesses told the
New York Times
that the men were then led behind a building.
Then shots were heard.
The men did not return.
Butscha: Videos are supposed to prove executions of men
A third video, also leaked to the
New York Times
, shows the footage taken by a drone for the Ukrainian military a day later.
It shows her taking pictures of a building.
She pans to the corpses lying next to the house - guarded by soldiers.
A bruise can be seen briefly - the man with the light blue sweater.
So the drone video seems to confirm the eyewitness accounts.
In order to prove what happened to the men in Bucha and to document possible war crimes, the
New York Times
said it spent several weeks in the Kiev suburb speaking with a survivor, witnesses, medical examiners, and police and military officials.
War in Ukraine: Russian offensive in Donbass - Zelenskyj speaks of "hell"
Meanwhile, the war in Ukraine continues with undiminished severity on the 85th day of the Russian invasion.
The focus is currently on the Donbass in the east of the country.
In its situation report, the Ukrainian general staff spoke of an “offensive in the Lysychansk and Sievjerodonetsk area” by the enemy.
Further south, on the border between Donetsk and Luhansk, fierce fighting is said to be taking place around the towns of Vyskryva and Oleksandropillya.
This is evidenced by several fatalities reported by Ukrainian authorities in the Donetsk region alone.
According to the situation report, however, Russian troops are said not to have achieved any significant successes.
Neither does Ukraine, which for its part continues to work on liberation in the Kharkiv region, like President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
"It's hell in Donbass, and that's not an exaggeration," said Zelenskyy, describing the situation.
(mt/dpa/afp)
List of rubrics: © Daniel Ceng Shou-Yi/ZUMA Press Wire/dpa
