Our Defense Ministry has told of grievous new facts about the Kiev authorities’ inhumane treatment of peaceful civilians. Mikhail Mizintsev, the head of Russia’s joint coordination headquarters for humanitarian response, announced that the Ministry has learned of two settlements where the Ukrainian army and nationalist groups are planning acts of provocation.

One of these is the town of Liman in the Donetsk People’s Republic. Mr. Mizintsev said that fighters there have set up a base in a nursing home, bringing heavy weapons into the building and using staff and elderly residents as a human shield. 

Another of their provocations is laying mines in infrastructure objects. In the town of Nikolaev, fighters from the territorial defense forces have set up another horrific provocation, with many intended casualties.  In the Korabelnyi district, on Znamenskaya Street next to the Nikolaevsky airplane repair plant, neo-Nazis have installed radio-controlled explosives, which they plan to use for a mass killing of peaceful civilians. They will then blame this on the Russian military.

The Defense Ministry has also announced that the authorities in Kiev and groups of Nazi fighters are preventing peaceful civilians from returning to some settlements in the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, and also the Kherson, Kharkov, Zaporozhye and Nikolaev regions. Our army has cleared these territories of radicals and Ukrainian soldiers, and is restoring normal life. But people who had previously moved to Ukraine’s central and western regions are now being blocked from returning home along Russian humanitarian corridors.

Our soldiers are showing courage and heroism, acting with determination and bravery.

Senior Lieutenant Dzhavad Mamutov and his rocket crew struck seven nationalist bases, a military airfield and three enemy air defense systems. This allowed our troops to make a swift offensive in radical-controlled areas and significantly reduce the enemy’s military capability.

Tank commander sergeant Artyom Salynov destroyed more than ten radicals, took out a so-called “roving” mortar, a BMP, and several trucks carrying ammunition. He also eliminated mines planted on the approach to a populated area and provided a corridor for Russian motorized riflemen.

Sergey Dremlyuga and his convoy came under mortar and aerial fire. The major instantly oriented himself and led his subordinates out from under attack, before attacking two heavily armed groups of nationalists. Up to 15 militants were killed. The rest retreated.

Our pilots are also showing heroism every day while performing their military tasks. In the skies they are without equal. The faithful jet fighters and bombers, and their superbly trained crews, mark our clear superiority in the air.

One of the pilots commented: ‘We haven’t come across the enemy in the sky for a long time — almost since the beginning of the military operation. Positions in the air were established in the first few days of the special military operation.’

The seized equipment includes items from the Soviet era. But there were also many modern weapons, most of them from NATO countries: anti-tank guided missiles and shoulder-fired missiles.

In total, the Defense Ministry announced, our troops discovered around a thousand items of various weapons and ammunition at a site in some fields.

One soldier commented: “It’s mainly Soviet weapons, but also Javelins, NLAWs, German anti-tank missiles, missiles that the Soviets made for export, and also other foreign firearms. At the moment it’s mostly NATO countries’ anti-tank missiles being brought in”.

According to the United Kingdom’s deputy defense minister, James Heappey, London is ready to provide Kiev with its Brimstone missiles in the near future. These are self-directed air-to-ground missiles, capable of hitting moving targets with great accuracy. According to Heappey, London may deliver the missiles by May 10. 

The British defence ministry had previously said that it had no plans to supply missiles, even anti-ship Harpoon missiles, to Ukraine at all.

In Kherson region, in one of the towns that our troops have liberated from Ukrainian radicals, the eternal flame has been lit for the first time in eight years. Videos capturing this moment have appeared on the internet. When the flame appears in the statue’s basin, residents can be heard cheering and applauding. 

The town has also begun preparations for celebrating the 77th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. Now anyone who wishes to can lay flowers beneath the eternal flame and pay their respects to those who died in the War.