Ukraine fights to hold off Russian advances in south, east

Ukrainian forces fought Saturday to hold off a Russian advance in their country's south and east, where the Kremlin is seeking to capture the industrial Donbas region.

KHARKIV, Ukraine: Ukrainian forces fought Saturday to hold off a Russian advance in their country's south and east, where the Kremlin is seeking to capture the industrial Donbas region and Western military analysts said Moscow's offensive was going much slower than planned. The United Nations continued trying to broker an evacuation of civilians from the increasingly hellish ruins of Mariupol, a southern port city that Russia has sought to capture since it invaded Ukraine more than nine weeks ago.

Citizens are “begging to get saved” from a steel plant that has become Mariupol's last defense stronghold, Mayor Vadym Boichenko said Friday. “There, it’s not a matter of days. It’s a matter of hours.” An estimated 2,000 fighters were holed up in the plant with about 1,000 civilians. Two Ukrainian women whose husbands are members of the Azov Regiment of Ukraine’s National Guard said they feared soldiers will be tortured and killed if left behind and captured by the Russians.

They asked for a Dunkirk-style mission to evacuate the fighters, a reference to the World War II operation launched to rescue surrounded Allied troops in northern France. “We can do this extraction operation ... which will save our soldiers, our civilians, our kids,” Kateryna Prokopenko, 27, told The Associated Press. “We need to do this right now, because people — every hour, every second — are dying.”

AP