- The Guardian Saturday 30 April 2022
(^14) News
War in Ukraine
Pjotr Sauer
Ukrainian officials have accused
Russian forces of seizing more than
2,000 artworks from museums in
the occupied city of Mariupol and
moving the pieces to areas of the
Russia -controlled Donbas region.
“The occupiers ‘liberated’ Mari-
upol from its historical and cultural
heritage. They stole and moved more
than 2,000 unique exhibits from
museums in Mariupol to Donetsk,”
Mariupol city council said in a state-
ment posted on its Telegram channel.
It said the haul includes works by
the 19th-century Mariupol native
Arkhip Kuindzhi and the famed
Russian romantic painter Ivan Aiva-
zovsky, as well as a handwritten
Torah scroll, and the Gospel of 1811,
made by a Venetian printing house
for the Greeks of Mariupol.
“Mariupol city council is preparing
materials for law enforcement agen-
cies to initiate criminal proceedings
and make an appeal to Interpol,” the
council added.
In a separate statement, Petro
Andriushchenko, a member of the
city council, said Russia had seized
three original paintings by Kuindzhi,
who gained international fame for his
portraits of the Russian landscape.
According to the council, the works
came from the three local museums,
including the Kuindzhi art museum,
which was heavily damaged during a
Russian airstrike on 21 March.
Natalia Kapustnikova, director of
the Mariupol local history museum,
told the pro-Kremlin outlet Izvestiya
that she had handed over the works
by Aivazovsky and Kuindzhi to
Russian forces “following the end
of the hostilities”. “The head of the
Kuindzhi art museum hid the paint-
ings when the war started. I knew
where they were ... They were then
moved to safety,” she said.
Mariupol Russian forces
have looted thousands of
artworks, city leaders say
Moscow confi rms attack
on Kyiv during visit by
head of United Nations
Jon Henley
Europe correspondent
Moscow has confi rmed it carried out
an airstrike on Kyiv during a visit by
the UN secretary general, António
Guterres, as Ukraine acknowledged
heavy losses from Russia’s attack in
the east but said the invader’s casu-
alties were “colossal”.
The Russian defence ministry
said in its daily briefi ng in Moscow
yesterday that two “high-precision,
long-range air-based weapons” had
destroyed the production buildings
of the Artyom missile and space
enterprise in the Ukrainian capital
on Thursday night.
The mayor of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko ,
however, said a 25-storey residential
building in the capital’s Shevchen-
kivskyi district was hit in the strike,
which Guterres’s spokesperson
described as “shocking”. Klitschko
said one body had been recovered.
The US -funded media organisa-
tion Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
said one of its staff , the journalist and
producer Vera Gyrych , had died “as
a result of a Russian missile hitting
the house where she lived” during
Guterres’s visit.
The missile attack, which came a
day after Guterres met the Russian
president, Vladimir Putin, in Mos-
cow and soon after his talks with the
Ukrainian leader, Volodymyr Zelens-
kiy, drew international criticism and
a furious response from Kyiv.
Yesterday the Ukrainian defence
minister, Oleksiy Reznikov , described
the strikes – denounced by the for-
eign minister, Dmytro Kuleba , as a
“heinous act of barbarism” – as “an
attack on the security of the secre-
tary general and on world security”.
Germany said the strike was “inhu-
mane”, adding that Berlin “strongly
condemns the Russian missile attack
on Kyiv while ... Guterres was in
talks”. A government spokesperson,
resistance “Russian territorial gains
have been limited and achieved at
signifi cant cost to Russian forces”.
Zelinskiy’s offi ce said Russia was
pounding the entire frontline in
Donetsk, one of the two Donbas prov-
inces, with rockets, artillery, mortar
bombs and aircraft, while Ukraine’s
general staff said Russia was shelling
positions along the line of contact.
The governor of the eastern city of
Kharkiv, Oleg Sinegubov , said yester-
day that fi ve civilians had been killed
on Thursday in what he described as
almost continuous shelling.
Zelenskiy’s offi ce said an operation
was planned yesterday to evacuate
civilians from Mariupol, the devas-
tated south-eastern port city that
has been the scene of some of the
bloodiest fighting and the worst
humanitarian catastrophe of the war.
A sprawling steel plant is the site
of Ukrainian troops’ last stand in the
besieged city but is also sheltering
hundreds of civilians. Russia said last
week that it had gained full control of
Mariupol except for the huge indus-
trial area.
A Ukrainian commander inside
the facility, Serhiy Volyna, from the
36th separate marine brigade, told
CNN the situation was “beyond a
humanitarian catastrophe”. He said
hundreds of people, including 60
young children, were inside the steel-
works, many of them injured.
“All the operating equipment, eve-
rything that is necessary to perform
surgery, has been destroyed so right
now, we cannot treat our wounded,
especially those with shrapnel
wounds and with bullet wounds,”
Volyna said. “Also, we are in dire
need of medication. We have almost
no medication left.”
Guterres said on Thursday that the
UN was doing “everything possible”
to ensure the evacuation of civilians
from the “apocalypse” in Mariupol.
Osnat Lubrani , a UN representative
to Ukraine, said yesterday she was
travelling to nearby Zaporizhzhia to
prepare for a “hopeful” evacuation.
Britain’ said yesterday that it was
sending experts to help Ukraine with
gathering evidence and prosecuting
war crimes , with a team due to arrive
in Poland in early May to investigate
w hat the foreign secretary, Liz Truss,
called Russian “barbarity ... and vile
atrocities, including against women”.
The bodies of 1,150 civilians have
been recovered in the region around
Kyiv since the withdrawal of Rus-
sian troops from the area earlier this
month, with 50-70% of the corpses
displaying bullet wounds from small
arms, the Kyiv police force said.
Ukrainian prosecutors said they
had identifi ed 10 Russian soldiers
suspected of committing war crimes
- including premeditated murder –
in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha during
their occupation of the area in March.
Wolfgang Büchner , accused Russia of
having “no respect whatsoever for
international law”.
Mark Malloch Brown , the former
UN deputy secretary general, said
the international community “will
recognise they cannot have their
UN secretary general treated in this
disrespectful, casual and frankly,
dangerous way, by Putin”.
Zelenskiy said in an overnight
address that the attack was aimed
at “humiliating” the UN, adding: “It
says a lot about Russia’s true atti-
tude to global institutions, about
the eff orts of the Russian leadership
to humiliate the UN and everything
that the organisation represents. It
requires a strong response.”
A day after the US president, Joe
Biden, called on Congress to send
up to $33bn (£26bn) to help Kyiv,
Ukraine acknowledged that it was
taking heavy losses as Moscow’s
forces, having failed to seize the cap-
ital, redoubled their eff orts to fully
capture the eastern Donbas region.
But it said casualties in the invad-
ing army were even worse. “We have
serious losses, but the Russians’
losses are much, much bigger ... They
have colossal losses,” a Ukrainian
presidential adviser, Oleksiy Aresto-
vych, said yesterday.
Britain’s defence ministry backed
up that assessment, saying Donbas
remained Russia’s strategic focus
but as a result of strong UkrainianRussia’s war in Ukraine: latest developments
Russian-controlled territory Areas where Ukraine regained controlSource: The Institute for the Study of War with AEI’s Critical Threats Project. 2230 BST 28 AprilCrimeaPolandBelarusRomaniaMoldovaDonbasChernobyl
KyivOdesaRussia
SumyKharkivIziumKhersonDonetskBlack SeaChernihivUkraine150 miles150 kmKyiv
Two cruise missiles hit
the west of the city on
the evening of 26 April,
partially destroying a
25-storey residential
buildingMariupol
Russian forces have
been hitting the Azovstal
steelworks heavily, preventing
wounded Ukrainian fighters
from being evacuatedRussian forces conducted
several small-scale
successful attacks from
Kherson toward MykolaivMykolaiv‘It says a lot about
Russia’s attitude to
global institutions,
about the eff orts to
humiliate the UN’Volodymyr Zelenskiy
Ukrainian president