The situation in Mariupol
The Russian army said on Friday that it had succeeded in entering Mariupol and fighting in the city center alongside troops from the separatist “republic” of Donetsk.
Taking Mariupol would be an important turning point in the war and would allow Russia to ensure territorial continuity between its forces coming from annexed Crimea (south) and the troops from Donbass (east).
First assessment of the Mariupol theater
More than 130 people were rescued from a Mariupol theater building bombed by the Russian army on Wednesday, but “hundreds” of others remain under the rubble, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Friday.
The Mariupol city council has reported at this stage at least one serious injury, but no deaths.
Russia has claimed that the theater, in which hundreds of residents of this besieged strategic Ukrainian port in the south-east of the country had taken refuge, had been destroyed by the Ukrainian nationalist Azov battalion.
Zelensky’s call to Moscow
This is a new video of the Ukrainian president, filmed at night in a deserted street and published this Saturday on Facebook. “Peace and security negotiations for Ukraine are the only chance for Russia to minimize the damage caused by its own mistakes,” Volodymyr Zelensky said.
“It’s time to get together. It’s time to discuss. It is time to restore territorial integrity and justice for Ukraine”, pleaded the Head of State.
“Otherwise, he warned, the losses for Russia will be such that it will take several generations to recover from them”.