A month and a half after the start of the invasion of Ukraine, the Russian army continues its offensive not without difficulty on the ground. The Russian Ministry of Defense announced a ceasefire on Thursday in Mariupol and the opening of evacuation corridors for civilians, who have been trapped for weeks in the city pounded by Russian forces. For now, Russia controls half of the city, the center still resists it.
Another attempt to evacuate civilians from Mariupol
A new attempt to evacuate the many civilians stranded in the besieged city of Mariupol was underway on Thursday. The Ukrainian government plans to send 45 buses to evacuate civilians, as Russia has declared itself “ready to open access to humanitarian convoys from Mariupol”, in the direction of the city of Zaporozhye, according to Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk.
Seventeen buses have already left for Mariupol from Zaporozhye, some 220 km to the northwest, she said. For its part, the International Committee of the Red Cross said it was ready “to direct” the evacuation operations of civilians from Friday on condition of having the necessary guarantees, according to a press release from the organization.
VIDEO. “I left 20 minutes before the explosion of the bomb”, says the director of the Mariupol maternity hospital
Mariupol, a strategic port on the Sea of Azov, has been besieged and shelled by Russian forces since the end of February. People who managed to leave the city and NGOs described terrible conditions there, with civilians holed up in cellars deprived of water, food and communication, and corpses littering the streets. Some 160,000 civilians are still believed to be stranded there. According to the British Ministry of Defence, “intense fighting continues in the city, a key objective for the Russian forces, but the Ukrainians retain control of the city center”.
“We don’t believe anyone,” says Zelensky
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Thursday that he did not believe Moscow’s promise the day before to “drastically reduce” its military activity in the direction of kyiv. “We don’t believe anyone, not a single beautiful sentence,” he assured in a video address to the nation, adding that Russian forces were regrouping to attack the Donbass region. “We will not give anything. We will fight for every meter of our territory,” he said. “We are preparing for it,” he insisted.
Russia strengthens the offensive in Luhansk
“We clearly feel that technology transfer [militaire] in our direction starts now,” Serhiy Haidai, head of the military administration of the Luhansk region, told TV. “As equipment and personnel are transferred, our enemies simply fire denser, more powerfully. Everything is already involved here: planes, artillery, large-caliber weapons, mortars – all settlements are bombed,” he said.
Phosphorus bombs in Donetsk?
According to Pavlo Kyrylenko, head of the military administration of the Donetsk region, in the Donbass disputed for years between pro-Russians and pro-Ukrainians, “in Maryinka, Krasnohorivka and Novomykhailivka, the enemy again used white phosphorus shells he said, referring to ammunition that is either banned or circumscribed by international law in populated areas. The bombs were reportedly sent on Wednesday. This information is, as it stands, impossible to verify independently.
Beginning of withdrawal at Chernobyl
Russian forces are beginning to withdraw from the Chernobyl nuclear site, which they took control of on the first day of the invasion of Ukraine on February 24, a senior Pentagon official said on Wednesday. The Russian army has started to withdraw from Gostomel airport, northwest of kyiv, and “Chernobyl is another area where they are starting to reposition themselves, leaving Chernobyl to go to Belarus”, told the press this senior official having requested anonymity.