Russia’s ultimatum to Ukrainian troops in Mariupol to surrender or die expired on Wednesday afternoon without a mass surrender, but the commander of a unit believed to be staying in the besieged city said his forces could only survive for days or hours. .
Thousands of Russian troops, backed by artillery and rocket fire, have tried to advance elsewhere in what Ukrainian authorities call the Battle of Donbass – Moscow’s pressure to seize two eastern provinces it claims on behalf of the separatists.
In a video, the commander of Ukraine’s 36th Marine Brigade, one of the last units believed to be staying in Mariupol, called for international help to escape the siege.
“This is our call to the world. It may be the last. We may have only a few days or hours left, “said Major Sergei Volina in a video uploaded to Facebook. “Enemy units are tens of times bigger than ours, they have superiority in the air, in artillery, in the ground forces, in equipment and in tanks.
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Read more: That’s why Russia is after Mariupol – and why it may not be the change in the game it once was
Volina, who said the women and children were locked in basements below the factory, spoke in front of a white brick wall in what sounded like a crowded room. Reuters could not verify where and when the video was taken or who else may have been in the room.
The United Nations said on Wednesday that the number of refugees fleeing Ukraine since Russia’s invasion on February 24 has exceeded five million. More than half are children.
Russia’s nearly eight-week invasion has failed to capture any of Ukraine’s largest cities. Moscow was forced to withdraw from northern Ukraine after the attack on Kyiv was repulsed last month, but returned troops for an attack in the east that began this week.
Residents sit on benches amid ruins in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol under the control of Russian military and pro-Russian separatists on April 19. Leon Klein / Anadolu Agency through Getty Images
In the ruins of Mariupol, the site of the worst battles in the war and the worst humanitarian catastrophe, Russia has bombed the last major Ukrainian fortress, the Azovstal steel plant, with bombers to destroy bunkers, Kyiv said.
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“The world is watching the killing of children online and is silent,” Presidential Adviser Mikhail Podoliak wrote on Twitter.
Russia has been trying to take full control of Mariupol since the first days of the war. Taking it would be a major strategic reward, connecting territory held by pro-Russian separatists in the east with the Crimean region, which Moscow annexed in 2014.
2:20 Questions arise as to whether Canadians are likely to be trapped at the Mariupol Steel Plant Questions are being raised about whether Canadians are likely to be trapped at the Mariupol Steel Plant
Russian-backed separatists said shortly before the 14-hour deadline on Wednesday that only five people had surrendered. Russia said the day before that no one had responded to such a request for capitulation.
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Ukraine has announced plans to send 90 buses to evacuate 6,000 civilians from Mariupol, saying it had reached a “preliminary agreement” with Russia on a safe corridor for the first time in weeks. But none of these earlier agreements actually succeeded on the spot, with Moscow blocking all convoys.
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Once a thriving port with 400,000 people, Mariupol has been turned into an exploded wasteland with corpses in the streets and residents locked in basements. Ukrainian authorities say tens of thousands of civilians have died there.
The battle for the Donbass region, which includes the provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk, could be decisive as Russia seeks victory to justify the February 24 invasion of President Vladimir Putin.
Putin accuses Ukraine of harassing Russian-speakers in Donbas, which Kyiv and its Western allies call a lie to justify unprovoked land grabbing.
Russian television showed Putin addressing a girl from Luhansk on Wednesday: “Such a tragedy that happened in Donbass, including in the Luhansk People’s Republic, forced, simply forced Russia to launch this military operation, which everyone knows today,” he said. he said.
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Read more: Russia attacks Ukrainian Donbass. This is how war can change
Peace talks have stalled. The Kremlin has accused Kyiv of delaying talks and changing its position. Kyiv accuses Moscow of blocking the talks by refusing a humanitarian ceasefire, especially to ease the besieged Mariupol.
British military intelligence has said that fighting in the Donbass is intensifying as Russian forces try to break through Ukraine’s lines, and that Russia is still gaining strength on Ukraine’s eastern border.
Moscow hopes its advantage in firepower will give it more success against Ukrainian defenders than in the failed campaign against Kyiv, when its overstretched supply lines were attacked by agile small units.
Within a day of launching an offensive in Donbass, Russian forces captured Kremina, a front-line city with a population of 18,000, on Tuesday. Ukraine’s General Staff said Russian forces had attempted an offensive near Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city, close to Russia’s supply lines to Donbass.
Local civilians pass a tank destroyed in heavy fighting in an area controlled by Russian-backed separatist forces in Mariupol, Ukraine, on April 19th. Alexey Alexandrov / AP
Inside Kharkov, where at least four people were killed in rocket attacks on Tuesday, the body of an elderly man lay face down near a park on a suburban street, and a band of blood flowed into the canal.
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“He worked in the security not far from here,” a resident named Maxim told Reuters. “The shelling started and everyone fled. Then we went out here, the old man was already dead.
Charles Michel, head of the European Council of the 27 EU member states, arrived in Kyiv as the last European official to visit and show support.
In the latest sign of Russia’s international isolation, the sports industry news site Sportico has announced that Russian players will be removed from the Wimbledon tennis tournament.
The All England Lawn Tennis Club, which is hosting the Grand Slam event, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “Making sports people hostage to political intrigue is unacceptable.”
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