Ukrainian forces fought on Saturday to hold back Russia’s offensive aimed at capturing the eastern industrial region, along with Ukraine’s latest detention in the southern city of Mariupol, where fighters and civilians hiding in a badly damaged steel plant withstood agonizing conditions. .
The United Nations has continued to try to mediate the evacuation of civilians from the vast Soviet-era plant and other bombed-out ruins of Mariupol, a port city Russia has been seeking to seize and heavily bombed since invading Ukraine more than a decade ago. weeks.
According to Ukrainian authorities, there are up to 1,000 civilians at the city’s Azovstal steel plant, who have not said how many fighters remain in the only part of Mariupol that is not occupied by Russian forces. The Russians estimate the number of Ukrainian soldiers at the plant at about 2,000.
Video and images shared with the Associated Press by two Ukrainian women who said their husbands were among the fighters there show unidentified wounded men with soiled bandages in need of replacement; others had open wounds or amputated limbs.
Treatment of the wounded in the steel plant
Skeletal medical personnel have treated at least 600 wounded, said the women, who identified their husbands as members of the Azov Regiment of the National Guard of Ukraine. The regiment is a far-right armed group that was included in the country’s National Guard after Russia’s first invasion in 2014.
In a video shared by the women, the injured men told the camera that they ate once a day and shared only 1.5 liters of water a day between the four. Stocks at the besieged facility have been depleted, they said.
This recent but undated photo was provided to the Associated Press on Friday by the wife of a member of the Azov Regiment of the National Guard of Ukraine, showing a woman comforting an injured man at the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol. (Associated Press)
The AP could not independently verify the date and location of the footage, which women said was taken last week in a maze of passages under the steel plant.
A shirtless man spoke with obvious pain as he described his wounds: two broken ribs, a punctured lung, and a sprained arm that “hung on the flesh.”
“I want to tell everyone who sees this: if you don’t stop this here in Ukraine, it will go further, to Europe,” he said.
Soviet-era steelmaking has an extensive underground network of bunkers capable of withstanding air strikes. But the situation became even worse after the Russians dropped “bunkers” and other bombs.
Above ground, Mariupol residents roamed their ruined houses in search of their belongings and continued to cook in the streets on Friday. Furniture was piled up in front of burned-out apartment buildings as people stepped out into the spring sun and explosions were heard in the background.
Kindergarten teacher Natalia Kalugina, 64, is preparing to cook pancakes on the street in Mariupol on Friday. She says her brother’s house in the city was destroyed by shelling. (Reuters)
Kindergarten teacher Natalia Kalugina, 64, made pancakes with cottage cheese on the street. She said she found the shelling terrible.
“I still can’t laugh. It’s just tears. My brother’s house was destroyed by shelling,” she said.
100,000 believe in a trap in Mariupol
In the bombed-out city, it was estimated that about 100,000 people were trapped with little food, water or medicine.
“Locals who manage to leave Mariupol say it’s hell, but when they leave this fortress, they say it’s worse,” said Mayor Vadim Boychenko.
UN spokesman Farhan Haq said the organization was in talks with authorities in Moscow and Kyiv to ensure safe passage.
This time, “we hope there is a slight hint of humanity in the enemy,” the mayor said. Ukraine has blamed the failure of numerous previous attempts to evacuate ongoing Russian shelling.
WATCH Russian missile strikes shake Kyiv, fighting intensifies in eastern Ukraine:
Russian missile strikes shook Kyiv, fighting intensified in eastern Ukraine
Russia blew up the Ukrainian capital Kyiv with missiles during a visit by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. On the Eastern Front, Russian troops are trying to encircle and defeat Ukrainian forces defeated by heavy fighting. 2:34
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told Saudi television Al-Arabiya that the real problem was that “humanitarian corridors are being ignored by Ukrainian ultranationals.” Moscow has repeatedly claimed that right-wing Ukrainians are obstructing evacuation efforts and using civilians as human shields.
In other developments:
- A former U.S. Marine was killed while fighting alongside Ukrainian forces, his family said, which would be the first known death of an American in a war. The United States did not confirm the report.
- The mayor of the town of Popasna in eastern Ukraine, Mykola Hanatov, said two buses traveling to evacuate residents had been shot at and that contact with drivers had been lost.
- Ukrainian forces are cracking down on people accused of aiding Russian troops. In the Kharkiv region alone, nearly 400 have been detained under anti-co-operation laws passed after Moscow’s February 24 invasion.
- International sanctions imposed on the Kremlin over the war are putting pressure on the country. Russia’s central bank said Russia’s economy is expected to shrink by up to 10% this year and the outlook is “extremely uncertain”.
- Russian forces have stolen “several hundred thousand tons” of grain in the occupied regions of Ukraine, Deputy Minister of Agriculture of Ukraine Taras Vysotsky said on Saturday.
Only insignificant profits for Russia
It was difficult to get a complete picture of the unfolding battle in the east, as air strikes and artillery shelling made the movement of reporters extremely dangerous. Both Ukraine and Moscow-backed rebels fighting in the east have imposed strict restrictions on reporting from the war zone.
But so far, Russian troops and separatist forces appear to have made little profit.
A member of the air crew pushed 155-millimeter shells, which eventually went to Ukraine, on a C-17 plane to be transported to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware on Friday. (Alex Brandon / Associated Press)
Partly because of the strength of Ukrainian resistance, the United States believes the Russians are “at least a few days back where they wanted to be” as they try to encircle Ukrainian troops to the east, a senior U.S. defense official said. for anonymity to discuss the U.S. military’s assessment.
As Russian troops try to move north of Mariupol to advance against Ukrainian forces from the south, their progress is “slow and uneven and certainly not decisive,” the official said.
The British Ministry of Defense proposed a similar assessment, saying it believed Russian forces in Ukraine were likely to suffer from “weakened morale”, along with a lack of unit-level skills and “inconsistent air support”.
Russian forces are “forced to merge and redeploy exhausted and disparate units from the failed attacks in northeastern Ukraine,” the ministry tweeted Saturday as part of a daily report on the war. She did not say on what basis she made the assessment.
Zelensky: Russia wants to empty this territory
In his evening video address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of trying to destroy Donbass and all those who live there.
The constant attacks “show that Russia wants to empty this territory of all people,” he said.
WATCH What happened in week 10 of Russia’s attack on Ukraine:
What happened in week 10 of Russia’s attack on Ukraine
Russia has warned the West not to provoke World War III if leaders continue to intervene in Ukraine, while senior US and UN officials visit Kyiv and assess the horrors of mass graves east of the capital. The Kremlin also stopped natural gas for Bulgaria and Poland. Here is a summary of the war in Ukraine from 23 to 29 April. 4:43
“If the Russian invaders succeed in carrying out their plans, even in part, then they have enough artillery and planes to turn the whole of Donbass to stone, as they did with Mariupol.
Ukrainian troops in the Luhansk region of Donbass repulsed an attack by Russian airborne troops and killed most of them, the governor said.
Cleaning crews are preparing to work at the site of the explosion in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, on Friday. (Emilio Morenati / Associated Press)
“Only seven of the invaders survived,” Governor Sergei Haidai said in a telegram on Friday. The claim cannot be confirmed immediately.
He did not say where the attack took place, but said Russian forces were preparing to attack Severodonetsk, northwest of Luhansk.
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