There are no immediate details of casualties or damage. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said about 2,500 to 3,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed in seven weeks of war with Russia and about 10,000 wounded, but there were no civilian casualties. Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register He told CNN on Friday that between 19,000 and 20,000 Russian soldiers had been killed in the fighting. Moscow said last month that 1,351 Russian soldiers had been killed and 3,825 wounded. Reuters could not independently verify the numbers of any side. Russia on Friday pledged to launch more strikes in Kyiv and said it had used cruise missiles at the Vizar plant on the outskirts of Kiev, which it said had built and repaired missiles, including anti-ship missiles. The attack followed the sinking of Moskva, the flagship of Moscow’s Black Sea Fleet, on Thursday. Ukraine said one of its missiles had caused the Moskva to sink, a powerful symbol of its resistance to a better-armed enemy. Moscow said the ship sank while being towed into a stormy sea following a fire caused by an ammunition explosion and that more than 500 sailors were evacuated. The United States believes Moscow has been hit by two Ukrainian missiles and that there have been Russian casualties, although the numbers are unclear, a senior US official has said. None of the ratings could be verified independently. The Ukrainian military said on Saturday that the presence of Russian warships in the Black Sea, armed with naval missiles, suggested that Russia was more likely to use them to strike at Ukraine’s defense industry and logistics infrastructure. He also said that the Russian navy was active in the Sea of Azov to block the port of Mariupol, where ground fighting has intensified as Ukraine said it was trying to break the siege of Russia. Home to 400,000 people before the invasion of Russia, Mariupol has been reduced to rubble. Thousands of civilians have lost their lives and tens of thousands remain trapped. read more “The situation in Mariupol is difficult and harsh. The fighting is taking place at the moment. The Russian army is constantly calling for additional units to invade the city,” Defense Ministry spokesman Oleksandr Motuzyanyk told AFP. He said the Russians did not fully understand it. The graves of Ukrainian soldiers killed during the Joint Forces Operation in the eastern part of the country appear to have been destroyed, according to a local Orthodox priest, by a Russian tank missile as Russia’s attack on Ukraine continues, in a Ukrainian cemetery in Cherniv , 6 April 2022. REUTERS / Serhii Nuzhnenko read more ‘SIGNIFICANT’ VICTORIES Zelensky said the military situation in the south and east was “still very difficult”, while praising the work of his armed forces. “Our army’s successes on the battlefield are really important, historically significant. But they are still not enough to clear our land of the invaders. We will still defeat them,” he said in a midnight video speech, calling again for allies to send heavier weapons and for an international embargo on Russian oil. Zelensky appealed to US President Joe Biden, urging the United States to designate Russia as a “terrorist state,” joining North Korea, Cuba, Iran and Syria, the Washington Post reported, citing acquaintances. their conversation. read more A White House spokesman responded: “We will continue to look at all options to increase pressure on Putin.” Ukrainian Prime Minister Dennis Smihal and top financial officials will attend meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in Washington next week, sources told Reuters. It will be the first opportunity for key Ukrainian officials to meet in person with financial officials from advanced economies following Russia’s February 24 invasion of Ukraine. read more ACCOMMODATION IN MARIOPOLI If Moscow occupied Mariupol, it would be the first major city to fall. The Russian Defense Ministry said it had seized the city’s Illich steel plant. The report could not be confirmed. The Ukrainian defenders are mainly believed to be able to withstand Azovstal, another huge steelworks. read more Both plants are owned by Metinvest, the empire of Ukraine’s richest businessman and the backbone of Ukraine’s industrial east – which told Reuters on Friday it would never allow its businesses to operate under Russian occupation. read more Moscow has used its naval power to blockade Ukrainian ports and threaten a possible landing of amphibians along the coast. Without Moskva, the largest warship that sank during the conflict by General Belgrano of Argentina in the Falklands War in 1982, its ability to threaten Ukraine from the sea could be crippled. Russia initially described its targets in Ukraine as “a special military operation” to disarm its neighbor and defeat the nationalists there. After ousting its invading force from the outskirts of Kiev this month, Moscow said its main military goal was to occupy Donbass, the eastern part of the country controlled by Russian-backed separatists since 2014. Kyiv and its Western allies say these are false excuses for an unprovoked offensive war that has driven a quarter of Ukraine’s 44 million people home and killed thousands. Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register Report from Reuters’s offices. Writes Raju Gopalakrishnan. Edited by William Mallard Our role models: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
