Ukrainian forces fought village to village on Saturday to contain a Russian advance in the east of the country, while the United Nations worked to mediate the evacuation of civilians from the last Ukrainian stronghold in the bombed-out ruins of the port city of Mariupol. An estimated 100,000 civilians remain in the city and up to 1,000 live under a large Soviet-era steel plant, according to Ukrainian officials. Ukraine has not said how many fighters are also at the plant, the only part of Mariupol that is not occupied by Russian forces, but the Russians put the number at about 2,000. Russian state media reported on Saturday that 25 civilians had been evacuated from the Azovstal steel plant, although there was no confirmation from the UN or Ukrainian officials. Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency reported that 19 adults and six children had been pulled from the factory, but gave no further details. Videos and images from inside the factory, shared with the Associated Press by two Ukrainians who said their husbands were among the fighters refusing to surrender there, show unknown wounded with stained bandages in need of change. others had open wounds or amputated limbs. Skeleton medical staff treated at least 600 wounded, the women said, who identified their husbands as members of Ukraine’s Azov National Guard Regiment. Some of the wounds were rotting with gangrene, they said. In the video shared by the women, the injured tell the camera that they eat once a day and share only 1.5 liters of water a day between four. Supplies inside the enclosed facility have been depleted, they said. The AP could not independently verify the date and location of the video, which the women said was taken last week in the passages below the steelworks. A man without a shirt spoke with obvious pain as he described his wounds: two broken ribs, a pierced lung and a dislocated arm “hanging in the flesh”. “I want to tell everyone who sees this. If you do not stop here in Ukraine, it will go further, in Europe,” he said. In other developments:
The bodies of three men were found buried in a forest not far from the Kiev suburb of Bucha, said the head of the Kyiv regional police force. The men, whose bodies were found on Friday, were tortured before being shot in the head, Andriy Nebytov wrote on Facebook. Ukrainian officials have claimed that retreating Russian troops carried out mass killings of civilians in Bucha. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in an interview that Russian and Ukrainian negotiators talk “almost every day.” However, he told China’s state-run Xinhua news agency that “progress has not been easy.” Two buses going to evacuate residents from the eastern Ukrainian town of Popasna came under fire and contact with organizers was lost, said Mayor Nikolai Hanatov. “We know that (the buses) arrived in the city and then came under fire from an enemy sabotage and reconnaissance team,” Khanatov said. A Russian rocket attack has destroyed the runway at Odessa, Ukraine’s third most populous city and a major Black Sea port, the Ukrainian military has said. The Ukrainian news agency UNIAN reported that “several” explosions were heard in Odessa on Saturday, prompting local authorities to advise residents to flee.
It was difficult to get a complete picture of the unfolding battle in the east, because air raids and artillery barricades have made the movement of journalists extremely dangerous. Both Ukraine and Moscow-backed rebels fighting in the east have also imposed severe restrictions on reports from the battle zone.
However, Western military analysts have suggested that Moscow’s attack on the eastern Donbass region, which includes Mariupol, was proceeding much more slowly than planned. So far, Russian-backed Russian troops and separatist forces appear to have made only small gains in the month since Moscow said it would focus its military presence in eastern Ukraine. Numerically, Russia’s military manpower far exceeds that of Ukraine. In the days before the start of the war, Western intelligence estimated that Russia had deployed up to 190,000 troops near the border. Ukraine’s permanent army is about 200,000, spread across the country. Partly because of the persistence of the Ukrainian resistance, the U.S. believes the Russians are “at least several days behind where they wanted to be” as they try to encircle Ukrainian troops in the east, a senior U.S. defense official said on condition of anonymity. discuss the assessment of the US military. With plenty of firepower still in reserve, Russia’s promised offensive could intensify and overwhelm the Ukrainians. In total, the Russian army has about 900,000 active-duty personnel. Russia also has a much larger air force and navy than Ukraine. Hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid have flowed into Ukraine since the start of the war, but Russia’s vast arsenal means that Ukraine’s needs are almost inexhaustible. “We need an unlimited number of weapons,” said Col. Oleksandr Motuzyanyk, a spokesman for Ukraine’s Defense Ministry. In Mariupol, city officials have described terrible shortages of food, water and medicine. The UN humanitarian spokesman, Saviano Abre, said the world body was in talks with authorities in Moscow and Kyiv but could not give details of the ongoing evacuation effort “due to the complexity and liquidity of the operation”. “There are, at the moment, ongoing high-level commitments with all governments, Russia and Ukraine, to make sure you can rescue civilians and support the evacuation of civilians from the factory,” Abreu told the AP. He did not confirm the video posted on social media claiming to show UN-marked vehicles in Mariupol. Ukraine has blamed the failure of several previous evacuation attempts on the ongoing Russian bombing. The brutality of the battles has amazed the world. In the United States, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby was moved Friday to discuss the “barbarity” and “impoverishment” of the invasion ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin. “It is difficult to see what he is doing in Ukraine, what his forces are doing in Ukraine and to think that any moral, moral person could justify it,” Kirby, a retired lieutenant, told reporters. “It’s hard to look at some of the pictures and imagine that any thinking, serious, mature leader would do that. So I can not talk to his psychology. But I think we can all talk about his devaluation.” For those at the Mariupol steel plant, a huge underground network of tunnels and warehouses has ensured safety from air raids. However, the situation has become more dire after the Russians dropped “bunker busters” and other bombs on the factory, the mayor said on Friday. The women, who said their husbands were in the factory as part of Azov’s constitution, said they feared soldiers would be tortured and killed if they were left behind and captured by the Russians. They called for a Dunkirk-type mission to evacuate the fighters, a reference to the World War II operation launched to rescue the besieged Allied troops in northern France. “We have to do this right now,” Katerina Prokopenko, 27, told the AP in Rome. Azov’s constitution, which helps defend the steel plant, has its roots in the Azov Order, which was formed in 2014 by far-right activists at the start of the separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine. Russia referred to the past of the constitution in an attempt to justify the invasion. —— Associated Press reporters Jon Gambrell and Yuras Karmanau in Lviv, Mstyslav Chernov in Kharkiv, Yesica Fisch in Sloviansk, Lolita C. Baldor in Washington, Trisha Thompson in Rome and AP staff around the world contributed to this report.
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