Moscow opts for the intensification of the siege around a steelworks where 2,000 fighters and civilians are holed up.
Vladimir Putin claimed on Thursday “the Liberation” of Mariupol, but Ukrainian soldiers holed up in the vast Azovstal steelworks still refuse to surrender. One of their leaders, the deputy commander of the Azov battalion, Svyatoslav Palamar asked, via Telegram messaging, for “guarantees” safety at “civilized world” to go out.
Read alsoWar in Ukraine: While Mariupol is dying, Ukraine is repairing its combat aircraft
They would be 2000, according to the Russian Ministry of Defense. Alongside them, about 1,000 civilians, women and children, and hundreds of wounded are hidden in this steelworks in the port of Mariupol at the southern tip of Donbass.
An assault too costly in life
“The end of the Mariupol liberation work is a success”, Putin told his defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, during a meeting broadcast on television. He also told him that he wanted to besiege the last fighters because an assault would cost too much in lives, the area being full of underground cavities. “I consider that the proposed assault on the industrial zone is not appropriate, I order to cancel it”a dit Vladimir Poutine. “We must think (…) of the life and health of our soldiers and our officers, we must not enter these catacombs, and crawl underground. Block off this whole area so that not a fly will pass”continued the master of the Kremlin.
For Oleksiy Arestovych, adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, if the Russians besiege the steelworks, “it is because they cannot conquer it by force, they have already suffered heavy human losses”.
The authorities of Mariupol fear that more than 20,000 people have died due to the fighting but also the lack of food, water and electricity, during two months of shelling and Russian siege on this martyred city.
Read also Ukrainians ready to fight to the end in Mariupol
While evacuations of civilians have been rare and perilous to organize, Ukrainian First Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said four buses of civilians were able to leave Mariupol on Wednesday. They head for Zaporijjia, a 200 km journey that can sometimes take several days, due to the many checkpoints to cross in this region of south-eastern Ukraine where fighting continues.
In the rest of Donbass and the south of the country, Russian forces have “continued their artillery fire along the entire front line”, according to the kyiv authorities. With, in particular, intense fighting in the region of Izyoum, “constant bombings” in Popasna and Roubijné, in the Luhansk region, and new strikes on Mikolaiv, in the south on the road to Odessa, which left one dead and two wounded. Russian forces are advancing towards the city of Kramatorsk, which continues to be the target of rocket attacks.
Make the complete junction
If the ordeal of Mariupol seems to be coming to an end, the battle for control of the entire Donbass region and part of southern Ukraine promises to be long. Especially since the capture of this port, by making it possible to make a complete connection between the Russian forces in the north of the Donbass and those coming from Crimea, could also free up personnel to strengthen their positions on the front line further north. And that the Ukrainians have obtained more substantial military aid in recent days, both from the Americans and from several allies. kyiv will receive in “the next days” heavy weapons, including battle tanks, from eastern European countries, said German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht. Joe Biden, for his part, announced new military assistance of $800 million.
In the kyiv region, more than 1,000 civilian bodies are piled up in morgues, a Ukrainian official told AFP, as Ukraine accuses the Russians of having “massacre” hundreds of civilians during their occupation of the region in March, which Moscow denies.
SEE ALSO – Mariupol mayor estimates at least 20,000 residents killed