Zaporizhzhia (Ukraine):Aid workers prepared hot food, wheelchairs, and toys Tuesday for civilians slowly making their way to relative safety from the pulverized remnants of a steel plant in Mariupol, as Russian forces resumed strikes on the facility. The Azovstal steel plant is the last holdout of Ukrainian resistance in a city that is otherwise controlled by Moscow’s forces and key to their campaign in Ukraine’s east. A senior U.S. official warned that Russia is planning to annex much of the country’s east later this month.
At a reception center, stretchers and wheelchairs were lined up, tiny children’s shoes dangled from a shopping cart, and a pile of toys waiting for the first convoy of civilians whose evacuation is being overseen by the United Nations and Red Cross. Their arrival would represent a rare glimmer of good news in the nearly 10-week war sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that has killed thousands, forced millions to flee the country, laid waste to towns and cities, and shifted the post-Cold War balance of power in eastern Europe.
At least some were apparently taken to a village controlled by Russia-backed separatists. The Russian military said some chose to stay in separatist areas. In the past, Ukraine has accused Moscow’s troops of taking civilians against their will to Russia or Russian-controlled areas — something the Kremlin has denied.
Others left for the Ukrainian-controlled city of Zaporizhzhia, some 140 miles (230 kilometers) northwest of Mariupol. It was not clear why the evacuees’ journey was taking so long, but the convoy likely had to pass through heavily contested areas and many checkpoints.
Mariupol has come to symbolize the human misery inflicted by the war. A Russian siege has trapped civilians with little access to food, water, and electricity, as Moscow’s forces pounded the city to rubble. The plant — where about 1,000 civilians sought shelter in a warren of underground bunkers along with some 2,000 fighters who have refused to surrender — has particularly transfixed the outside world. Mariupol Deputy Mayor Sergei Orlov told the BBC that high-level negotiations were underway among Ukraine, Russia, and international organizations on evacuating more people.
But Russian forces and their allies resumed strikes on the plant on Tuesday. Vadim Astafyev, a Defense Ministry spokesman, said that Ukrainian fighters at the plant used the cease-fire that allowed civilians to flee to take up new positions. They “came out of the basements, took up firing positions on the territory and in the buildings of the plant,” he said. Russian troops along with the Moscow-backed separatist forces used “artillery and aircraft ... to destroy these firing positions.”
After failing to take Kyiv in the early weeks of the war, Russia withdrew some of its forces and then said it would switch its focus to Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland of the Donbas. Mariupol lies in the region, and its capture would deprive Ukraine of a vital port, allow Russia to establish a land corridor to the Crimean Peninsula, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014, and free up troops for fighting elsewhere in the Donbas.
Also read:Modi calls for immediate ceasefire in Ukraine
Michael Carpenter, U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said Monday that the U.S. believes the Kremlin plans to annex much of eastern Ukraine and recognize the southern city of Kherson as an independent republic. Neither move would be recognized by the United States or its allies, he said. Russia is planning to hold sham referendums in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in the Donbas that would “try to add a veneer of democratic or electoral legitimacy” and attach the entities to Russia, Carpenter said. He also said there were signs that Russia would engineer an independence vote in Kherson.
Mayors and local legislators there have been abducted, internet and cellphone service has been severed and a Russian school curriculum will soon be imposed, Carpenter said. Ukraine’s government says Russia has introduced its ruble as currency there. Getting a full picture of the unfolding battle in the east has been difficult because airstrikes and artillery barrages have made it extremely dangerous for reporters to move around. Both Ukraine and the Moscow-backed rebels fighting in the east have introduced tight restrictions on reporting.
But so far, Russia’s troops and their allied separatist forces appear to have made only minor gains, taking several small towns as they try to advance in relatively small groups against staunch Ukrainian resistance. In its daily Twitter statement on the war, the British military said Tuesday it believes the Russian military is now “significantly weaker” after suffering losses in its war on Ukraine.