Russia celebrates Victory Day by shelling Ukraine

The journalist and correspondent María Senovilla took to the microphones of "De cara al mundo" to analyse the course of the war in Ukraine, following the latest bombings after the re-election of Vladimir Putin on Victory Day. 

Russia has a numerical, weapons and drone advantage on the battlefield, as well as in terms of recruitment, which is currently the main concern in Ukraine. 

That Victory Day parade was described as rather lacklustre, wasn't it? But as pyrrhic as it was, it has nothing to do with what Ukrainian soldiers are facing on the battlefields, on the front lines in Ukraine. I have been talking to troops from different brigades who are deployed at different points on the Donbas front and all of them, all without exception, agree that the superiority of Russian troops in terms of numbers, weapons resources and above all drones is making their work more difficult than ever. 

This issue of the drones, which in cities like Chassityar, where Russia has managed to advance right now, which is the most advanced combat front it has right now since Bajmut, the soldiers who were in those positions told you that they are real swarms and that they can be seen constantly flying over the sky and that they can be heard. 

It's limiting them to the extent that they have to do more night missions than day missions now. It affects the artillery, the infantry, the combat medics, who sometimes have to wait for hours to get to positions and extract the wounded with all that entails. 

It seems that Russia has not only overcome an enormous loss of weapons - Ukraine claims to have destroyed 3,000 Russian tanks so far in the invasion - but has also managed to promote a national defence industry that has not only been limited to the manufacture of weapons, but also of drones, which is conditioning this war, which has been the great innovation, as we have been talking about since the beginning of this war, the use of drones, to the level they are at now. 

And then there is numerical superiority. Russia is much larger than Ukraine, that is clear to no one, and its capacity to recruit new soldiers is much greater. And what's more, look at the news and images that the Russian media are selling as something patriotic and marvellous, of actions in schools where it seems that the number of students now attending these military academies, underage students, has multiplied. 

In non-military schools, some of this training was included for military purposes, for example, from flying drones to encouraging children to be recruited when they come of age. This tells us that Russia is not limiting itself to the present, that it is preparing the Russian army of the future, even for the coming decades, and against this, Ukraine has a very difficult, very difficult time competing, because here, this conscription, this forced demobilisation, those who wanted to enlist voluntarily have already done so, especially in 2022 and 2023, and right now it is very difficult to convince those men, especially those of fighting age, who have not wanted to enlist so far, it is very difficult to convince them now. 

The Russians are preparing, as you say, for the coming decades, and it seems to me that we are a bit in the doldrums. On mobilisation, Ukraine has just approved the mobilisation of prisoners. Which ones do, which ones don't 

This is a measure that was criticised a lot during the seizures of Solitude and Bakhmut, in which the Wagner mercenary army was nourished by this prison population, which they said was the worst that Russia had, they had sent them here as cannon fodder. 

And now it is Ukraine which, in the middle of this mobilisation law, which is still being added to and modified, has included this aspect. It is going to be possible to recruit prisoners who have no blood crimes, who are not serving sentences for crimes of rape, and who have minimum sentences. But, it is a measure that was strongly criticised here a little over a year ago, that of mobilising the prison population, and now Ukraine has to search the prisons, they say that several tens of thousands of men could be released from there, as I said, with non-blood crimes and minor offences. 

Maria, we were talking about Russia's weapons capacity and manpower, and they show it on the ground, because you tell me that there is a sad recent record, isn't there? 300 bombs on the Sumi region in 24 hours and shelling in Kharkov. 

That's right, that was the Victory Day celebration we had in Ukraine, that's right. A record, a very sad record, in less than 24 hours in the Sumi oblast, which is not particularly big, there were 60 separate attacks and in total 302 bombs were dropped. 

There were also bombings in Kharkov, bombings in Donetsk, here they are daily, and bombings already at night, almost at dawn, against Mikolayiv and Odessa, the attacks that were launched against the Black Sea. 

In the European Union at least they are moving because it has been approved to allocate the profits from the frozen Russian assets, to allocate those profits for the defence of Ukraine. 

Finally, after more than a year of debating this measure, the decision has been taken, an agreement has been reached, and the first 1.5 billion will probably arrive in July for Ukraine's defence. 

We are talking about assets valued at more than 210 billion euros, which is what the European Union has frozen of Russian assets. Most of them are in Belgium, where 190 billion Russian assets are concentrated and are taxed at a rate of 25%. It is these frozen assets that the EU has now decided to allocate to the defence of Ukraine. 

At first there was talk of earmarking it for reconstruction, but in the end it was agreed that military aid is now more necessary than long-term reconstruction. 3 billion, which is not much compared to the 50 billion that the EU agreed to give to Ukraine over the next four years, but it is a small amount. Half of that 3.5 billion could arrive here in Ukraine as early as July. 

Armaments will be purchased and some of it will be used for financial assistance, but also for defence. Let us remind our audience that these Russian assets were frozen as part of the sanctions packages that were imposed on Russia, especially during the first months of the full-scale invasion, although in the end they did not have much effect on the country and did not succeed in paralysing the war as was initially expected. 

Maria, we close the chapter there in Ukraine with Ukraine's new ambassador to the UK, Valeri Zaludny. Zelensky is looking for a way out for a possible political rival if elections were to be held.  

All these months, since January when General Valery Zaludny was dismissed, there have been rumours on the street about the possibility of Zaludny forming a political party that could be an opposition to Zelensky. The truth is that in the popularity rankings Zaludny came out better than Zelensky, which could be a problem for the current president 

A problem, however, in the short term, because at the moment elections cannot be held in Ukraine, it cannot be guaranteed that the entire population will vote, and that they will do so in safe conditions. So the elections that should have been held this year have been postponed indefinitely. 

And the United Kingdom has been chosen, remember that last week we were talking about the visit of Duchess Sophia of Edinburgh to Ukraine, who was the first British royal to visit the country since the start of the full-scale war. And we said that we had to keep an eye out in the coming days to see what announcement the UK would come out with, because normally when they make these kinds of staged visits, they are usually accompanied by a major announcement. 

Nobody expected Zaludny to be appointed ambassador to London. We assume that Zaludny will do a good job because he was a great interlocutor with NATO and although right now the United Kingdom is not a member of the European Union, it is a member of NATO and I imagine that he will begin to do this diplomatic work, this long-term diplomatic work because the war is going on for a long time, as we have been saying for months now, and he could be very useful in this place, in the United Kingdom, which has shown itself to be a great ally of Ukraine and which seems to be strengthening ties as time goes by.