Summary of the Events of the Day
Our brave defenders in the east held out another day without losing any territory. But Russian soldiers continue to arrive to bolster their numbers in the East.
Battle For Kyiv (Kyiv, Chernihiv, Zhitomir, and Sumy)
Horror stories of girls as young as 14 being raped by Russian and Chechen soldiers continue to be told by those who survived. 25 girls have had their stories documented now, with nine of them pregnant. One woman told the story of how a Chechen soldier took her away to another house and raped her. Russian soldiers entered in the middle of the assault, and she thought she was done for, but the other soldiers took the Chechen away. When she returned to her home, she found her husband dead from a gunshot in his abdomen. Another young woman was forced to watch her 16-year-old sister raped as soldiers shouted that all the women in Bucha would be raped.
Battle for the Donbas (Donetsk, Luhansk, Mariupol, and Kharkiv)
Missile attacks continued all night and day against the besieged city of Kharkiv. A 16-story apartment building was struck in the middle of the night while people were sleeping killing eight civilians and injuring nine.
The Russian convoy has reached Izyum and has begun moving south towards Kramatorsk, bypassing Izyum which is still half-controlled by Ukrainian forces.
Russian forces tried to take Rubizhne in the night but were repulsed with heavy damage. At least twenty Russian soldiers died, three military vehicles seized, and possibly one aircraft downed. An even greater loss of Russian soldiers, numbering around 90, died in a failed assault on Novoaidar.
All across the Contact Line Russia fired artillery. The worst hit cities were Popasna, Severodonetsk, and Lysychansk. One man was killed and another two hospitalized.
On the Donetsk front, six attacks were made during the night, but all were repulsed with the Russians losing four tanks and over 30 military vehicles.
A Russian drone dropped a poisonous solution at 21:00 on Monday night over Mariupol. Ukrainian soldiers defending the city began experiencing a hard time in breathing suggesting that Russia had used chemical weapon against them. World leaders reacted sharply against Russia if it is proven that chemical weapons were indeed involved. The remaining 1500 Ukrainian defenders have been surrounded and blocked in Mariupol by a force ten times larger, but they bravely fight on and inflict heavy damage against the Russian soldiers. But they cannot last much longer, and many will be killed, and the rest captured unless they can be supplied with more ammunition.
Other Regions
A rocket hit an infrastructure building in the western city of Khmelnitsky. Two missiles were fired at infrastructure sites near Dnipropetrovsk. One was shot down and the other damaged the roof of an old windmill. There were no casualties in either attack.
Other News
Russia was declared default on their foreign debt by S&P Global after they tried to make their latest payment in rubles. Worldwide sanctions have cut Russia off Western currencies such as dollars and euros which is what is required for debt payments.
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky continued his address of parliaments around the world with an address to the Lithuanian parliament.
Pro-Russian Ukrainian lawmaker Viktor Medvedchuk, the godfather to Putin’s children, was finally captured in Western Ukraine trying to escape over the border. He had been arrested for treason prior to the Russian invasion and had escaped as Russia invaded on February 24.