War in Ukraine, live: Ukraine claims to have hit a Russian military vessel in the Black Sea

Update on the war in Ukraine On the 48th day of the Russian invasion, the Ukrainian army and its Western allies are still expecting a major offensive by Russian troops in the East to take control of Donbass. According to the French general staff, it could start “within a few days”. “Russia could launch a major offensive to conquer the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, or even push as far as [fleuve] Dnieper, if its capacities allow it, and complete the reduction of the last resistances in Mariupol”, said a spokesman in front of the press. A US military official added, in a briefing reported by the Foreign Policy news outlet, that Russian bombardments and aerial sorties had diminished in recent days “as Russian troops still move into position for the Battle of Donbass”. In Mariupol. According to Moscow, more than a thousand Ukrainian soldiers have visited the besieged strategic port for more than a month. The Ukrainians have not denied, but assure that the city has not fallen and that pockets of resistance still exist in the metallurgical complex of Azovstal where the last Ukrainian troops are entrenched, for some, hidden in a network of tunnels . Vadym Boïtchenko, mayor of the city, affirms that 180,000 civilians are still waiting to be evacuated from the agglomeration and surrounding villages. On Tuesday, he had put forward a death toll of at least 20,000 since the start of the war. In the East. The Ukrainian authorities have called on the population of these regions to flee as soon as possible. No humanitarian corridor could be opened on Wednesday, the Ukrainians accusing the Russians of “violating the ceasefire” in the Luhansk region. The head of one of the two unilaterally proclaimed pro-Russian “republics”, Leonid Passetchnik, claimed that his soldiers now controlled “80 to 90%” of this region. According to him, the Ukrainian army is now only present in the towns of Kremennaya, Rubizhne, Sievierodonetsk, Lissitchansk and, to a lesser extent, Popasnaya. At Borodyanka, April 13. UKRAINIAN GOVERNMENTAL PRESS SER / VIA REUTERS Kyiv and the North. Around the capital as elsewhere, the Ukrainian authorities say they continue to find corpses every day in the areas from which the Russian forces withdrew at the end of March, in particular in Boutcha and Borodianka. The Russian Defense Ministry has warned that if Ukrainian attacks on Russian territory continue, “strikes will be carried out by the Russian military on decision-making centers, including in kyiv”. In the Kharkiv region (northeast), seven people have been killed and 22 others injured in Russian bombardments in the past twenty-four hours, according to the regional governor. The difficult balance. The figures provided by the UN are, as in other wars, taken as a reference for civilian victims: the provisional toll is “4,450 civilian victims in the country: 1,892 dead and 2,558 injured” since February 24 , but the UN says it “believes the actual numbers are much higher”. The UN has announced a change in methodology and that the next assessments should be closer to reality. As for military losses, each side regularly gives the number of enemy soldiers killed. Regarding their own losses, they are more discreet. Russia said on March 25 that it had lost 1,351 soldiers. Ukraine admits losing soldiers in the fighting, but has not released specific figures.