Russian military leaders have conducted a mobilization in the temporarily occupied territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions (ORDLO) and are forming units consisting of the 1st and 2nd Army Corps to storm settlements in the territory controlled by Ukraine, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valeriy Zaluzhny has said.
“Most of these ‘mobilized’ people have Russian passports. Now some of our fellow countrymen are being transferred through the territory of Russia’s Rostov region, the Krasnodar Territory and the temporarily occupied Crimea to conduct a naval offensive operation to capture Odesa. The other part was taken to Belgorod to storm Kyiv in the first echelon as ‘cannon fodder’,” Zaluzhny wrote on Facebook on Thursday.
He specified that this was “a war crime and a flagrant violation of the Convention for the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War.”
“This is also another proof of the complete subordination of the 1st and 2nd ACs of the 8th Army of the Russian Armed Forces,” Zaluzhny said.
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Russian warships sank a peaceful merchant ship flying the Panama flag near Odesa, four sailors are reported as killed, said Anton Gerashchenko, adviser to the Minister of Internal Affairs.
“March 3, 2022. Due to refusal to enter the seaport of the city of Odesa, in the mined part of Odesa water area, two missiles below the waterline sank the merchant ship Helt, which sailed under the flag of Panama, in the area of Tendra Spit,” Gerashchenko wrote on Telegram on Thursday.
According to him, the crew consisted of six people, of which “four sailors drowned along with the ship,” and “the captain and the cook are currently on the raft and heading towards the coast.”
“The rescue operation is impossible, because the bay is under the gun of the Russian Navy,” Gerashchenko stressed.