One month has passed since Russia invaded Ukraine. Ukraine remains defiant in the face of it.
At least 7000 Russian soldiers have been killed in the last month, according to NATO officials, and up to 15,000 Russian forces have been accused of holding “hostage” the 150,000 people of the besieged Ukrainian city of Chernihiv, as desperate local officials impose drinking water rationing on trapped civilians.
- Animal rights groups have made the dramatic rescue of a lion and a wolf from a war torn zoo in Ukraine.
- US President Joe Biden has departed for Nato and EU talks in Brussels. He will visit Poland afterwards.
- Russian President Vladimir Putin still intends to attend the G-20 summit in Indonesia later this year.
- The city of Mariupol is being described as a “freezing hellscape riddled with dead bodies and destroyed buildings”.
- Suburbs around Kyiv and other major cities are slowly turning into battlefields, with Ukraine making advances in some areas.
One month of war, still defiant. With its government still standing and its outnumbered troops battling Russian forces to bloody stalemates on multiple fronts, Ukraine is scarred, wounded and mourning its dead but far from beaten.
When Russia unleashed its invasion February 24 in Europe’s biggest offensive since World War II and brandished the prospect of nuclear escalation if the West intervened, a lightning-swift toppling of Ukraine’s democratically elected government seemed likely.
But with Wednesday (local time) marking four full weeks of fighting, Russia is bogged down in a grinding military campaign, with untold numbers of dead, no immediate end in sight, and its economy crippled by Western sanctions.