President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, announced that Russian troops are being pushed away from Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, while Washington intelligence revealed that Vladimir Putin won’t stop with the East and is preparing for a long war.
Following that bleak prediction, and after US President, Joe Biden, warned that Ukraine would likely run out of funds to keep fighting, the US House of Representatives voted on Tuesday, May 10, 2022, to send a $40 billion aid package to the country (Ukraine). The US Senate is expected to rubber-stamp the decision by the end of this week or next, which would bring total US support for Ukraine to around $54 billion.
House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, told her Democratic colleagues ahead of the vote that “With this aid package, America sends a resounding message to the world of our unwavering determination to stand with the courageous people of Ukraine until victory is won”.
Good News from North-Eastern Kharkiv
In his evening address on Tuesday, May 10, 2022, Zelenskyy said he received “good news” from the North-Eastern Kharkiv region.
“The occupiers are gradually being pushed away. I am grateful to all our defenders who are holding the line and demonstrating truly superhuman strength to drive out the army of invaders.”
Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy
The Head of the Kharkiv Regional State Administration, Oleg Synegubov, noted on Telegram that “fierce battles” was ongoing in the region, adding that the city itself was under heavy fire.
“Due to successful offensive operations, our defenders liberated Cherkasy Tyshky, Rusky Tyshky, Rubizhne and Bayrak from the invaders. Thus, the enemy was driven even further from Kharkiv, and the occupiers had even less opportunity to fire on the regional centre.”
Head of the Kharkiv Regional State Administration, Oleg Synegubov
A Temporary Shift?
Despite the apparent headway made, Zelenskyy urged Ukrainians not to “create an atmosphere of specific moral pressure, when certain victories are expected weekly and even daily”, a reflection of the intense pressure being exerted by Russia on its neighbour. A clear example of that could be seen in the Kharkiv region, where Synegubov announced that 44 civilian bodies were found under the rubble of a destroyed building in the Eastern town of Izyum, which is now under Russian control.
Since trying and failing to capture Kyiv (Ukraine’s capital) in the first weeks of the invasion in late February 2022, Moscow moved its focus to the Russian-speaking Donbas region in the East. But on Tuesday, May 10, 2022, US Director of National Intelligence, Avril Haines, said the decision to concentrate Russian forces there was “only a temporary shift”.
Haines said “We assess President Putin is preparing for prolonged conflict in Ukraine during which he still intends to achieve goals beyond the Donbas”, adding that US intelligence thinks he [Putin] is determined to build a land bridge to Russian-controlled territory in Moldova. A path to achieving that goal would be taking the Southern city of Odessa, where missile strikes have destroyed buildings, set ablaze a shopping centre and killed one person, as well as interrupting a visit by European Council President, Charles Michel on Monday, May 9, 2022.
Total Apathy
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister, Iryna Vereshchuk, disclosed that in the similarly strategic Port of Mariupol, around 1,000 troops remain trapped in increasingly dire circumstances at the Azovstal Steelworks.
The plant is the final stronghold of resistance in the city, which has seen relentless destruction. An online petition calling on the United Nations to extract all remaining soldiers garnered more than 1.1 million signatures on Tuesday, May 10, 2022. So far, many civilians have been evacuated from the plant in recent days, as Russia pushed for full control of Mariupol, in order to open up another land corridor from Crimea, which it seized in 2014.
But the Ukrainian Presidency said the “epicentre of the fighting has moved” to Bilogorivka in the Lugansk Region of the Donbas, which is the site of a deadly Russian air strike on Sunday, May 8, 2022, that Ukrainian officials said killed over 60 people.
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