Updated:
Thursday, April 07, 2022 12:18 p.m
Posted: 4/7/2022 6:57 AM
The Ukrainian government has asked its citizens to leave the Lugansk, Donetsk and Kharkov regions in the east of the country because Russian bombing could block escape routes. Only yesterday the Kremlin announced “a final offensive” against Mariupolthe port city on the shore of the Sea of Azov, which has been under siege since the beginning of the invasion.
“Enemy efforts are concentrated in the direction of Donetsk and Lugansk hostilities around the towns of Popasna and Rubizhne, and in establishing control over Mariupol,” warned the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
“The situation is getting worse every day. The (Russian) orcs have intensified the bombardment, they want more hostages, more suffering in the cities,” the head of the Luhansk regional state administration Serhiy Haidai said on Facebook. “Today has shown that you cannot wait any longer. Pack your bags and evacuate!” he added “All free cities in the region are under heavy enemy fire”, such as Severodonetsk, Popasna and Rubishne.
Deputy Prime Minister and Head for the Reintegration of Occupied Territories Iryna Vereshchuk has stated that the heads of the military administrations of the Kharkov, Lugansk and Donetsk regions are asking the population to leave them, according to the UNIAN agency: “We must evacuate until then there is still such a possibility because It will be almost impossible to stop the fire.”
According to the latest war report, Russia is actively using aviation to continue its attack on Mariupol, where according to the Ukrainian parliament’s human rights commissioner Lyudmila Denisova, only in the last 24 hours there have been 118 bombings and where more than 130,000 citizens are resisting as best they can.
The Russian Defense Ministry already announced the final offensive to capture Mariupol on Tuesday evening, after the expiry of the ultimatum given to the Ukrainian armed forces and the troops of the Azov Battalion to lay down their arms and leave the city.
“Given Kiev’s lack of interest in saving the life of its military, Mariupol is liberated by Russian forces from nationalist units and the Donetsk People’s Republic,” Major General Igor Konashenkov said at the time.
Ukrainian troops continue to resist
Ukrainian troops continue to resist in Mariupol, against which the Russians have already launched a powerful offensive, Oleksiy Arestovych, adviser to the head of the Presidential Office, told a news conference in Kyiv: “The enemy resumed the offensive in Mariupol, but our troops resist”.
This was also said by President Zelenskyi’s adviser “The fiercest battles” are being fought in the Lugansk region, in the cities of Rubishne, Popazna, Severskodonetsk (…) These are areas where our troops are defending, counterattacking, stopping the enemy,” he stressed. But at the same time he recognized this “The situation is very difficult”.
That’s what he said too Russian troops have increased the use of unmanned aerial vehicles for fear of using their planes and because many of them are shot down by the Ukrainian army.
Thousands dead and 90% of Mariúpol destroyed
the siege of the city It hasn’t stopped for a month and the armed forces are fighting street after street in the center of the city: the Russians and the men of Chechen leader Ramzan Kadirov to take it and the Ukrainian troops to expel the Russians from the punished city in which more than 90% of the infrastructure was destroyed, according to local authorities.
“Heavy fighting and Russian airstrikes in besieged Mariupol continue,” the British Ministry of Defense confirmed and warned the “humanitarian situation in the city is deteriorating”, because the citizens have neither water, electricity, heating nor medicines, nor communication. “Russian forces have blocked humanitarian access, probably to urge defenders to surrender,” London says.
The mayor of the city Vadim Boychenko stated that “a week ago conservative estimates estimate the death toll at 5,000“, including about 210 children. “But given the size of the city, the catastrophic destruction, the length of the blockade and fierce resistance, tens of thousands of civilians of Mariupol could become victims of the inmates” added
For this reason he declares Russia “is in no hurry to give the green light to the Turkish mission and other initiatives to save and completely evacuate the city”. He also warned that the Russians “They started running mobile crematoria” in the city to “cover their tracks” from the “crimes committed by the army in Mariupol after the widespread genocide in Bucha”.
The mayor also added: all witnesses Possible “Russian atrocities” they will be silenced after being identified in filtration camps, one of which would now be in Magush in the Donetsk region.