Ukrainian forces were advancing Saturday into areas north of Kyiv as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused departing Russian soldiers of leaving behind mines. A Red Cross convoy was heading to Mariupol, set to try again to evacuate civilians from the besieged port.

Fighting

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has accused Russian soldiers of deliberately mining areas in northern Ukraine as they withdraw or are pushed out by Ukrainian forces.

• Ukrainian forces continue to advance against withdrawing Russian forces in the vicinity of Kyiv, British military intelligence said.

• Russian missiles hit two cities in central Ukraine, damaging infrastructure and residential buildings, the head of the Poltava region said.

• Russia’s defense ministry said high-precision air-launched missiles had disabled military airfields in Poltava and Dnipro.

• Maks Levin, a photographer and videographer who was working for a Ukrainian news website and was a long-time contributor to Reuters, was killed while covering the war.

Diplomacy

• Pope Francis implicitly criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin over the invasion of Ukraine, saying a “potentate” was fomenting conflict for nationalist interests.

• Russia’s space director said the restoration of normal ties between partners at the International Space Station (ISS) and other joint space projects would be possible only once Western sanctions against Moscow are lifted.

Economy

• Ukraine’s economy shrank 16% year-on-year in the first quarter of this year and could contract 40% in 2022 as a result of Russia’s invasion, the economy ministry said, citing preliminary estimates.

• Ukraine’s railways are struggling with a backlog of grain wagons on the country’s western border as traders look for alternative export routes after Russia’s invasion blocked off the main Black Sea ports, analyst APK-Inform said.

• The European Union is working on further sanctions on Russia, but any additional measures will not affect the energy sector, the EU’s Economic Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni said.

Quotes

• “At each checkpoint we were stopped … We were checked, undressed. They checked our shoulders, arms … (to see) if I had been taking part in the fighting.” Vladimir Andreev, a 63-year-old pensioner from Mariupol describing checks by Russian troops as he and the group he was with fled the city.
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Pope Francis set off on a two-day visit to the Mediterranean island nation of Malta Saturday, a visit that was postponed in March 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic. The pope is expected to use this visit to address the issue of European migration, which has become an increasing concern with the war in the Ukraine.

The plight of migrants in Europe as the world watches an endless flow of Ukrainians seek refuge following Russia’s invasion is of utmost importance to Pope Francis as he embarks on a weekend visit to Malta, an island that has always been on the frontline in dealing with the large numbers of sea arrivals from Africa. Maltese authorities have often found the situation complicated and NGOs have accused the island nation of not doing enough to help people in distress. 

Before leaving Rome on Saturday, the 85-year-old pope met with three Ukrainian refugee families hosted by the Catholic community of Sant’Egidio. In recent weeks he has often spoken of the need to assist fleeing Ukrainians forced to leave everything behind because of the war.

Francis is the third pope since 1990 to visit the three-island archipelago, where 85% of the roughly half a million population professes the Catholic faith. 

At the end of a general audience in the Vatican Friday, the pope said he was looking forward to visiting that “luminous land,” following in the footsteps of the Apostle Paul, who was said to have been warmly welcomed there after being shipwrecked on his way to Rome. 

The pope added that this trip would give him the opportunity to experience for himself the Christian community there, whose lively history dates back thousands of years, and to meet the people of a country which is at the center of the Mediterranean and south of the European continent. Francis paid tribute to the Maltese people for their welcome and commitment to “so many brothers and sisters seeking refuge.”

Saturday the pope will meet Maltese authorities and after lunch take a catamaran trip from Valletta harbor to the island of Gozo where he will preside over a prayer meeting at the national shrine of Ta ‘Pinu.

Sunday he will visit the Grotto of St. Paul, the island nation’s patron saint, whose ship, according to account, washed up on Maltese shores in 60 A.D. He will then celebrate a mass before thousands of people in a square in Floriana. Before returning to Rome, Francis will meet with migrants at the peace center in Hal Far that was established in honor of Pope John Paul XXIII. The center is run by volunteers who help Franciscan friar Dionysius Mintoff, who founded it 50 years ago and still runs it today at the age of 91.
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New details have emerged about Belarusians fighting for Ukraine against Russia’s invasion as part of a broader struggle to free their own country from Russian domination and the rule of Moscow-backed autocrat Alexander Lukashenko.

Speaking exclusively to VOA in a Tuesday phone interview, the deputy commander of the largest pro-Ukraine Belarusian fighting force said its numbers have almost reached the size of an average Ukrainian battalion, which he said has about 450-500 troops.

“Several thousand more have applied to join us through our online recruitment tool,” said Vadim Kabanchuk of the Kastus Kalinouski battalion, named after a Belarusian revolutionary who led a regional uprising against Russian occupation in the 1860s.

The Kalinouski battalion began forming in Kyiv after Russia had begun its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24. The battalion uses the Telegram channel @belwarriors to share news and images of its activities. On March 9, it announced its adoption of the Kalinouski name in a video posted to the platform.

Kabanchuk said he is one of a number of the Belarusian battalion’s fighters who have been active in Ukraine’s defense starting in 2014. That year, Russian forces invaded eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region to foment a separatist uprising within its Russian-speaking community.

Belarusians have been drawn to fight for Ukraine for years in the hope that freeing it from Russian occupation would boost their own efforts to rid Belarus of Moscow’s influence and end the 27-year presidency of Lukashenko, a key Russian ally.

The Kalinouski battalion swore an oath of allegiance to Belarus and Ukraine in a Telegram video posted March 25. Four days later, in another video, battalion members said they had a new status as part of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and held up green booklets that resembled Ukrainian military IDs.

There has been no confirmation of the Kalinouski battalion’s announcement on websites run by the Ukrainian government and military. The Ukrainian Embassy in Washington did not respond to a VOA email asking whether it could provide such a confirmation.

Franak Viacorka, a senior adviser to exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, told VOA that he believes the Kalinouski battalion’s declared integration into the Ukrainian Armed Forces is credible. He described the battalion as the biggest and “perhaps best organized” of the Belarusian groups fighting for Ukraine and said it has earned a right to display Belarus’ national flag and coat of arms in its operations.

“As of now, they will be fighting not only in one place, not only in defense of Kyiv, but all over Ukraine,” Viacorka said.

As Russia’s full-scale invasion began, Belarusian fighters of what later became the Kalinouski battalion joined the Ukrainian military’s volunteer Territorial Defense Force units in Kyiv, according to deputy commander Kabanchuk. The Kyiv Independent news site had reported in January that the Territorial Defense Force units would comprise former active-duty Ukrainian military personnel and other volunteers, including civilians.

Kabanchuk said some of the Kyiv territorial defense units that his fellow Belarusian fighters joined included Ukrainian fighters with ties to the Azov regiment of the Ukrainian National Guard. The Azov regiment is known for the far-right beliefs of some of its members and has been most active in Mariupol, the southern Ukrainian port besieged by Russia for weeks.

“We initially were part of Kyiv territorial defense units whose members called themselves part of the ‘Azov movement,'” said Kabanchuk. “But we are not part of the Ukrainian National Guard’s Azov regiment and don’t want to be confused with it,” he added.

Most Belarusians who volunteer to fight for Ukraine are driven not by far-right ideology but by a belief that Kyiv’s struggle is part of their own fight to free Belarus from Russian imperialism, said former Belarusian Foreign Ministry official Pavel Slunkin in a phone call with VOA.

“They include bloggers, journalists, I.T. specialists, factory workers. All kinds of professions. And they want to see Belarus as a democratic state,” said Slunkin, now an analyst at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

Not all Belarusians who seek to join the Kalinouski battalion will make it through a multistage vetting process aimed at weeding out security threats, Kabanchuk explained. Those threats include the possibility of Lukashenko’s agents trying to infiltrate the battalion, he said.

“Many of the thousands who applied will be rejected after in-person interviews at the Belarusian recruitment center in the Polish capital, Warsaw, which acts as a first-stage filtration hub for potential fighters,” Kabanchuk said. “Others will be rejected as unsuitable after they arrive to the battalion bases.”

Smaller groups of Belarusian fighters have been active in other parts of Ukraine in recent weeks, according to Belarusian opposition figures. In a Thursday tweet, Tsikhanouskaya said a recently formed regiment called Pahonia is training new volunteers on behalf of Ukraine’s armed forces.

In a Friday statement to VOA, a spokesperson for the International Legion for the Defense of Ukraine, Norwegian-born Damien Magrou, responded to a question about Pahonia by saying Ukrainian officials are considering an initiative to integrate “suitable” Belarusian volunteers into the legion.

Kabanchuk said the Kalinouski battalion prefers not to join the international legion because his fighters have much more autonomy as a separate unit.

Viacorka, the Tsikhanouskaya adviser, said in a Thursday tweet that he hopes the Pahonia regiment will form the basis of a new professional Belarusian army in a post-Lukashenko era.

Lukashenko derided the pro-Ukraine Belarusian fighters last month, telling a government meeting that the fighters are “crazy” and motivated only by money.

As for his own troops, he has avoided sending them into Ukraine to join in Russia’s invasion.

Kabanchuk said that if Lukashenko were to do that, some of the Belarusian military’s forces would surrender, and others would turn against the Belarusian autocrat.

“He understands very well that sending troops into Ukraine will speed up the fall of his regime,” Kabanchuk said.
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Shouts of fear and panic. The thunder of gunfire. Dozens of corpses in pools of blood on the floor of the Bataclan concert hall. A Paris court Friday released audio recordings and photos of the 2015 Paris terror attacks that had never been made public before, to expose the horrors of that night. 

Some survivors of the attacks cried while others left the courtroom in shock. 

It was a jarring end to the most crucial week in the monthslong trial over the Islamic State attacks on the Bataclan, cafes in Paris and France’s national stadium Nov. 13, 2015, which killed 130 people. With thousands of plaintiffs, this trial is among the biggest in modern French history. 

Lawyers and victims’ families saw this week as crucial for shedding light on what happened, but it left many of them frustrated. 

The last surviving member of the attack team, Salah Abdeslam, and suspected accomplices were questioned at last about the day of the attacks itself. They stayed largely silent, refusing to answer most questions, while the courtroom waited in breathless silence. 

And when Abdeslam finally chose to speak briefly, instead of expressing remorse for his role in the attacks, he expressed regret that he didn’t detonate his suicide belt that bloody night. 

“I didn’t go all the way,” Salah Abdeslam told the court Wednesday. “I gave up trying to put on the (suicide) belt, not out of cowardice or fear. I didn’t want to, that’s all.” 

Abdeslam dropped off three attackers in a car, who then blew themselves up on the forecourt of France’s national soccer stadium moments after a France-Germany match kicked off. Abdeslam said he subsequently drove to the north of Paris, and took the metro to the southern suburb of Montrouge, where he hid his explosives belt after he claimed didn’t have the nerve to detonate it. 

Abdeslam said he lied to his co-attackers that the belt had not worked “because I was ashamed of not having gone all the way. I was afraid of the eyes of others.” Abdeslam’s testimony contradicted that of a police explosives expert who has told the court that the suicide belt was faulty. 

Then Friday, the court heard audio recordings and was shown photos from inside the Bataclan concert hall that have never been made public before. 

The first recording marked the moment the attackers entered the theater. Music from the performers onstage — American band Eagles of Death Metal — can still be heard as the assailants unleashed a solid minute of constant gunfire from their automatic weapons. The crowd shouted and cried, and the music stops. And then the shooting starts again. 

The second recording involved the subsequent hostage-taking, including the voice of one victim who said, “they’re going to blow up everything — they have explosives.” 

Then came the final assault: A volley of gunfire from police, followed by blasts from the attackers’ suicide belts. Then the evacuation, as police commanded: “Go! Go! We’re getting out, hands up and run!” 

The 20 photos included images from around the Bataclan hall — the entry, the balcony, the stairwell. Blood is everywhere. One shows about 30 corpses in the dance pit below the stage. 

Some survivors cried while watching the images. About 20 other people left the courtroom, visibly upset, as the audio played. 

All the attackers were killed that night, but Abdeslam fled France and traveled to the Molenbeek district of Brussels where he grew up. He was arrested in March 2016. For years, he refused to speak to investigators, and he has stayed largely silent through the trial. 

During Wednesday’s key session, chief judge Jean-Louis Peries spent an hour asking Abdeslam questions. No answer, again and again. 

Finally, Abdeslam agreed to answer the questions of just one of the plaintiffs’ many lawyers. He said three days before the attacks, he was planning to travel to Syria and was unaware of the attack plot until his brother Brahim filled him in. Brahim Abdeslam blew himself up Nov. 13, 2015, after attacking a Paris cafe. 

Abdeslam’s lawyers Olivia Ronen and Martin Vettes defended his reluctance to speak. In a statement to The Associated Press, they said Abdeslam “made use of his right to silence” but then decided to answer the questions of one lawyer for the civil parties who “sought to understand what he had to say.” 

A total of 20 people are on trial on charges including attack planning, the supply of weapons and giving logistical support. Several are presumed to have been killed while fighting for the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq. The end of the trial is scheduled for June. 
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The Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the western Ukrainian town of Ternopil was full at lunch time — as it has been most days since Russia invaded Ukraine.

“The cathedral is full of people praying for peace,” Archbishop Vasyl Semeniuk told me. But as I reported Thursday, the Greek-Catholic prelate can sound like a holy warrior: He sees Vladimir Putin’s army as an evil that must be overcome so it cannot again attack Ukraine or others. His sentiment is not out of line with the thoughts of many in his flock.

While no one wants a long war, both growing confidence and fury with what weeks of war have done to Ukraine — with the loss of life and widespread damage — has left many Ukrainians in no mood to concede very much to Russia to end the fighting.

“You have to do what you have to do, if you want to keep what you have, or get what you want,” one of Semeniuk’s priests told me. He said he hopes for peace but suspects this might turn into a long war.

Anti-Russia sentiments are hardening. A group of lawmakers has drafted a law to strip the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate — an autonomous church subordinate to the Russian Orthodox Church — of its property, churches and monasteries. More than 150 of its churches have already defected to the smaller Kyiv-based Orthodox Church of Ukraine.

Their priests and congregants have reacted furiously to the spiritual defense that Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, has made for Russia’s invasion. In weekly broadcasts the 75-year-old Kirill has depicted the war as an apocalyptic battle against evil forces determined to shatter the God-given unity of Holy Russia. He has described the conflict as having a “metaphysical significance” as he echoes President Putin’s painting of a depraved and decadent West.

The late American diplomat Richard Holbrooke, who played a key role in negotiating the 1995 Dayton Accords that put an end to the three-and-a-half-year-long Bosnian War, used to say that warring parties could only strike a peace deal when both had become exhausted. It is not clear that either Russia or Ukraine is yet exhausted.

But many people are — the millions of Ukrainians who are displaced, mainly sheltering in central and western Ukraine.

The displaced

Outside Ternopil’s Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, local volunteers crowd around a truck delivering humanitarian aid sent by churches in Sicily. They quickly unload its contents for distribution — the consignment including food, clothes and diapers. They make short work of the unloading.

Nearby, some of the displaced sort through items already laid out in front of the cathedral.

“People come here from the east and south of Ukraine with nothing,” says Maria, a 30-year-old local journalist. “They arrive with just what they were wearing when they crawled out of bunkers and fled.”

She has taken time off from work to help with the humanitarian effort.

“They need clothes, shampoo, soap, food and toys for the kids,” she adds. “They also have no money — most Ukrainians live from month to month and don’t have savings.”

Some 230 kilometers to the east, in the crowded central Ukrainian town of Vinnytsia, accommodating the steady influx of evacuees from farther east and south is becoming harder.

Despite local aid efforts here on the ground, most continue moving west.

“People come here in an awful state: they’re physically exhausted because the way here is long and most probably they were staying in the basements and in shelters for days and weeks in terrible conditions,” says Valeriy Dyakiv, director of a reception facility sheltering around 300 evacuees.

Dyakiv told me air raid sirens sounded at the same time a young couple was arriving with their child, after having been under shelling for days.

The couple’s daughter “got a panic attack; she started screaming and she couldn’t keep quiet and so he hugged her, and then she finally calmed, eventually,” Dyakiv said.

People from all walks of life shelter at Dyakiv’s reception — among them theater director Oleksandr Kovshun and thespian Olena Prystup. Kovshun is the director of the world famous Berezil Theater in Kharkiv, the beleaguered eastern Ukrainian town.

“The building is still intact,” he tells me. But a building next door was struck by a Russian missile.

Prystup said many of the theater company sheltered at the Berezil for 10 days mainly huddled in the capacious wardrobe. She and her photographer husband decided to leave the city when the neighboring building was hit. She has been in Vinnytsia for three weeks and with Kovshun has organized drama classes and poetry readings for the kids.

“But I so want to go back to our theater,” she says.

Journalists

Journalists are urging Ukrainian authorities to clarify and discuss wartime reporting rules following a series of ugly confrontations between TV crews and Ukrainian officials and soldiers at media centers in both Kyiv and Lviv, as well as on the streets. A team of British broadcasters was at the center of a heated confrontation Thursday when Ukrainian soldiers waved guns at the reporter and crew as they filmed blast scenes from Russian missile strikes.

Ukrainian authorities say real-time footage can be used by Russian commanders to assess the impact of missile strikes and to repeat an attack, if they judge it unsuccessful. Foreign TV crews have been accused of being “camera killers.”

Media companies say the Russians have other means for damage assessment — including footage and images they get from drones and satellites. They also point out that the Russian armed forces are notorious in Syria for striking at targets twice. The technique is called a “double tap” — when an initial strike is followed by a second attack shortly after, targeting and often killing rescuers and first responders who have converged on the site.

There have been mounting frustrations among the foreign press corps over accreditation hold-ups, resulting in applications taking weeks to receive approval or never materializing at all. Ukrainian photographers have complained of being obstructed in Kyiv and having their cameras snatched or broken. Journalists, led by the local Ukrainian media, appealed this week to authorities to develop more transparent rules for covering Russian shelling.

With relations souring, Ukraine’s defense and culture ministries issued a statement this week urging the media to adhere to the rules of martial law. They praised the media, saying: “It is difficult to overestimate the work of a journalist in wartime. Working in combat zones, they are constantly in an atmosphere of fear and tension, risking their own lives to convey the most complete, true and unbiased picture of developments.

But they continued: “Under martial law, information must be balanced and portioned, as the enemy is constantly monitoring the information field to counter Ukrainian defenders. So, we call on the media to continue to follow the rules during martial law so as not to endanger themselves and others.”

The ministries acknowledged the tensions, adding that after the war, government and media can pool their experience and “work together to develop the necessary solutions for more effective interaction.”

In the meantime, media organizations — foreign and local — are worried at the lack of clarity about what is allowed or not.
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