Ukraine today recalled the liberation of the Kiev region a year ago, and its president, Volodimir Zelensky, promised that the Ukrainian flag will fly again throughout the country, including the Crimean peninsula, for the recovery of which a senior Ukrainian official presented on Sunday. a twelve point plan.
“The first offensives, the first conquests, the first liberated territories. A year has passed since we expelled the invaders from the Kiev region,” Zelensky wrote on Telegram.
The head of state promised that the Armed Forces and the Ukrainian people will liberate “all our lands.”
“We will return the Ukrainian flag to all our cities and communities. We will do everything possible to restore Ukraine,” he insisted.
MORE THAN THOUSAND DEAD
The Kyiv Region Military Administration recalled that the fighting lasted more than a month and 15 communities in the Vyshhorod, Bucha and Brovary districts were under Russian occupation.
According to Ukrainian police, Russian forces killed 1,374 Ukrainians in the kyiv region, including 38 children, while 280 people are still listed as missing.
It was on April 2, 2022 that Ukraine declared the Kiev province liberated, although Russian troops began to withdraw at the end of March, not only in this region, but also in Chernigov (north). On April 4 they did the same in Sumy (northeast).
The precedent were two successes of the Ukrainian troops, who managed on the one hand to recapture the Hostómel airfield, just 32 kilometers from the capital and which was taken by Russia on the first day of the war on February 24, 2022, and on the other stop the kilometric column of Russian armored vehicles advancing towards the capital.
RUSSIA AND ITS “GESTURE OF GOOD WILL”
While Ukraine talks of liberation, Russia still insists today that the withdrawal was a “gesture of goodwill”, since it came as Russian negotiators announced in Istanbul the decision to “reduce military activity” in Kyiv and Chernihiv, to contribute to a de-escalation.
Two weeks later, Russia launched the first “major offensive” to take all of Donbas, an objective it achieved last July in the Lugansk region, but not yet in the Donetsk region after 403 days of fighting, focused for the past nine months mainly on Bakhmut, but also in Avdiivka and increasingly in Mariinka.
The General Staff of Ukraine reported today that the day before, the Armed Forces repelled 20 enemy attacks in these last two cities alone.
The US Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said today that the “relatively high pace of offensive operations around Mariinka” may however be jeopardizing Russian assaults on other parts of Donetsk, such as Bakhmut.
Russia has indeed achieved in the more than thirteen months of war create a land corridor from Donbas through the Sea of Azov to the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimeawhich was annexed in 2014 and which Ukraine has wanted to take back ever since.
The secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, Oleksiy Danilov, today published “12 steps for the evacuation of temporarily occupied Crimea”, a kind of draft that his department is currently working on.
CRIMINAL LIABILITY AND DETOX
Among other points, it establishes criminal prosecution for collaboration and treason, and mechanisms to assess the responsibility and degree of participation of Ukrainian citizens who supported the activities of the occupation administrations.
The courts would decide on the criminal liability of officials, judges, prosecutors and police officers who were part of the Ukrainian staff and that they went over to the Russian structures.
A database with the Russian crimes committed against Ukrainian citizens who resisted the occupation would also be created, the rights of the Tatar activists from Ukraine and Crimea and were to be released immediately to all those persecuted for political reasons since 2014.
Danilov also believes that the propagandists who contributed to the occupation, the militarization of education and the incitement of enmity against Ukraine by Ukrainians, Crimean Tatars and other nationalities should be investigated and should lose their freedom, titles, pensions and property. by court ruling.
The senior Ukrainian official further proposes that Russians who “illegally came to live” in Crimea immediately leave the territory of Ukraine, and that all deeds made outside Ukrainian law, including those on immovable property, be declared void.
It also contemplates a Russian propaganda “detox” program by employing people who supported the Russian occupation in the reconstruction of destroyed cities, exhumations and burials of victims of Russian aggression.
Another item in Danilov’s plan would involve renaming the port city of Sevastopol, the base of the Russian Black Sea Fleet.
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