The G7 and Moscow's recriminations have escalated

 Stronger sanctions and enhanced military assistance to Ukraine are being considered by Western nations. For the first time, a Russian leader accused the White House of direct participation in the fight, while Vladimir Putin said that "success will be ours, just as it was in 1945."

It's a powerful sign. The leaders of the G7 (the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Canada, Japan, and Germany) have selected May 8, 1945, to have a teleconference to discuss their reaction to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. This coincides with the day on which Westerners commemorate the Nazi surrender.

At a G7 summit in Brussels this weekend, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was invited as part of the group's third meeting this year. The meeting was held against the background of arduous discussions in Brussels this weekend for a European embargo against Russian oil.

Moscow accuses Washington

Following the usual military parade on Moscow's Red Square, Vladimir Poutine is expected to make a speech in which he will most likely draw parallels between the Nazis and the Ukrainian way of government, as well as the Westerners if the situation warrants it. The president also set the tone on Sunday, declaring, as he had done in 1945, that "success will be ours" in the "liberation of our own country from Nazi filth." Important decisions from the Kremlin are anticipated, despite the fact that reports of a widespread mobilization have been blown out of proportion in recent days.

Continuing a recent trend of verbal escalation from Moscow, a leader of the ruling United Russia party declared for the first time on Friday that Kherson, which has been the only major city the Russian army has been able to capture thus far, was now officially considered to be part of Russian territory "forever." Shortly after, Dmitry Peskov, the Russian president's spokesman, predicted that Poland could "pose a threat," and on Saturday, Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of the Russian parliament, accused the United States of "coordinating and developing military operations, thus participating directly in the military actions against our country."

It is the first time a Russian leader of this stature has accused the United States of being on the verge of becoming a co-belligerent. The White House, together with its NATO allies, accepts responsibility for delivering heavy weaponry to Ukraine as well as training Ukrainian forces on American or German grounds. Her more major role, in particular providing Kiev with the whereabouts of Russian generals killed by Ukrainian drones in recent weeks, is, however, denied by the Russian foreign ministry.

The United States' military assistance, which has totaled 3.5 billion dollars since the beginning of the Russian invasion on February 24th, must be translated into a new tranche of 150 million dollars, which was announced Friday by Vice President Joe Biden and will be spent on artillery munitions and radar equipment. The White House calculated that, as a result, the money allotted to the armaments for Kyiv were "essentially spent" by this point in time. As a result, an extension will be required as soon as possible.

Offensives and counter-offensives

Russian soldiers in the eastern Donbass area resumed their gradual advance near the towns of Lyman, Popasnyansky, Severodonetsk, and Avdiivka, despite the presence of international observers. Moscow claims to have destroyed "huge amounts of weaponry and military equipment transferred to Ukraine by the United States and other Western nations" in the Ukrainian cities of Krasnograd and Karlovka, according to the Russian government. According to Kiev, the bombing of a school would have resulted in about sixty casualties on Saturday.

According to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) reference site, the Ukrainian counter-offensive in Kharkiv, which aims to move Ukraine's second city beyond of range of enemy fire, has made headway. Both the former and the latter believe that Ukrainian forces will be able to push their Russian counterparts back to the border near Belgorod in the coming days, and that the Ukrainian army "is demonstrating an ability to launch offensive operations on a larger scale than has previously been the case."

Ukraine also claimed that two Russian landing ships, the Serna, were destroyed by drone strikes a hundred kilometers off the coast of Odessa, near the little island of Serpents. Ukraine reported on Thursday that the Russian ship Admiral Makarov was destroyed by a missile attack; however, the status of the vessel was still unclear by Sunday morning.

The Ukrainians maintained control of the steel plant of Azovstal, which is located in the vital port of Mariupol and has been besieged for more than two months. On Saturday evening, Kiev announced that all of the women, children, and elderly people who had taken refuge in the underground steelworks, which had been built as an anti-atomic shelter during the Soviet era, had been evacuated under the auspices of the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross (CIRC). Moscow, on the other side, is adamant in its opposition to any exfiltration of the 1,600 troops of the Azov regiment, who dread being executed if they are captured as prisoners of war.