Russian forces have launched for the first time an assault with tanks and infantry against the Azovstal steelworks, the last pocket of Ukrainian resistance in Mariupol (southeast), while the Europeans are preparing an embargo against Russian oil on Wednesday.
On Tuesday, the UN announced that it had succeeded in evacuating more than a hundred civilians from this steelworks, where dozens of others, entrenched in the immense underground galleries of this enormous metallurgical complex, have been living in hell for weeks.
In a statement online Tuesday evening, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said 156 civilians had been evacuated and arrived in Zaporizhia, a Ukrainian-held town 230 km northwest of Mariupol.
A new evacuation operation is scheduled for Wednesday, “if the security situation allows it”, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said on Tuesday. However, nothing says that the conditions will be met after the announcement Tuesday by the Russian forces of their attack, launched after weeks of intense bombardments.
“A powerful assault on the territory of Azovstal is currently underway, with the support of armored vehicles, tanks, with attempts to land troops, with the help of boats and a large number of elements of infantry,” Sviatoslav Palamar, deputy commander of the Ukrainian Azov regiment, said in a video message on Telegram.
Shortly before, the Russian Ministry of Defense had announced that planes and artillery of the Russian army and the pro-Russian “People’s Republic” of Donetsk were beginning to “destroy” Ukrainian “firing positions”.
– “We had lost hope” –
Until now the Russian forces pounded by plane and from the sea this steelworks, whose underground galleries dating from the Second World War shelter fighters and civilians deprived of water, food and medicine, without trying to enter.
Two women were killed and a dozen other civilians injured in the shelling that preceded the assault, Palamar said in his video message, indicating that other civilians were still at the scene. About 200 are still present in Azovstal, according to the mayor of Mariupol, Vadim Boitchenko.
Those who were finally able to be evacuated began to tell of the hell they had been in for weeks.
“We are so grateful to everyone who helped us. There was a time when we lost hope, we thought everyone had forgotten about us,” said one of the evacuees, Anna Zaitseva, with in the arms her six-month-old baby, Svyatoslav.
“The people I traveled with told me heartbreaking stories of the hell they went through. I think of the people who remain trapped. We will do everything in our power to help them,” said on Tuesday the United Nations humanitarian coordinator for Ukraine, Osnat Lubrani, who participated in this evacuation operation.
– “Humanitarian breaks” –
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres called for “more humanitarian pauses” on the model of the one organized with Ukraine and Russia and which allowed the evacuation of civilians from Azovstal, without specifying their possible locations. .
And in a phone call lasting more than two hours with President Vladimir Putin, his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron asked him to “allow the continuation (of these) evacuations”.
The Russian leader for his part called on Ukraine’s Western allies to stop their arms deliveries to kyiv. On the same day, Prime Minister Boris Jonson announced additional military aid of 355 million euros for Ukraine.
The European Union will launch on Wednesday the examination of new sanctions against Moscow, including an embargo on oil and petroleum products purchased from Russia. But this measure still raises reservations among some EU countries, which are very dependent on Russian deliveries, several European officials and diplomats told AFP.
The European Commission is proposing a gradual shutdown of European purchases over a period of six to eight months, until the end of 2022, with an exemption for Hungary and Slovakia. These two countries, landlocked and totally dependent on deliveries by the Druzhba pipeline, will be able to continue their purchases from Russia in 2023, said a European official.
This derogation is problematic, because Bulgaria and the Czech Republic also want to benefit from it, explained diplomats informed of the discussions led by the Commission.
– Eastern offensive –
On the ground, Russian forces continued their offensive in eastern Ukraine on Tuesday.
Some 21 civilians died and 27 were injured in the Donetsk region on Tuesday, the heaviest daily toll since the strike on Kramatorsk station that left 57 dead, according to regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko on Telegram.
Of those 21 killed, 10 were in the strike on a factory in Avdiivka and five in Lyman, one of the hotspots on the front line.
In the south, the big city of Odessa is again the target of Russian missiles.
Ukrainians fear that this major port is among Moscow’s objectives, especially since a Russian general claimed that the offensive in Ukraine was aimed at establishing a corridor from Russia to the breakaway Moldovan region of Transdniestria, which would pass through Odessa.
On Tuesday evening, missile fire notably destroyed three power plants in Lviv, Andriï Sadovy, the mayor of this large city in the west of the country, now partially deprived of electricity, said on Telegram.
And on the diplomatic front, Russia will boycott on Wednesday – a rare gesture – a meeting of the UN Security Council with the European Union’s Political and Security Committee (PSC), illustrating a further deterioration in relations between Moscow and its partners at the United Nations, according to diplomats.
burx / ob / ybl