Washington-
Russian President Vladimir Putin declared the besieged Ukrainian port city of Mariupol “liberated” after nearly two months of fighting, although Russian forces have failed to penetrate the city’s huge steel plant in Azovstal, which is still in the hands of Ukrainian militants and civilians . .
Instead of storming the plant, Putin ordered the plant locked down and sealed “so not even a fly can get through,” a tactic observers believe will save the lives of Russian soldiers and potentially starve the plant’s residents.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian officials say evidence of mass graves has surfaced outside of Mariupol. Photos from Maxar Technologies, an American satellite imaging company, appear to show images of at least 200 new graves in the city of Manhush.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told the World Bank on Thursday his country needs up to $7 billion a month in aid and hundreds of billions to recover from the Russian invasion.
U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday approved an additional $800 million in U.S. military aid to Ukraine, declaring it necessary to assist forces in Kyiv in repelling Russian fighters in critical fighting in Ukraine, the country’s eastern region , to help.
“This package includes heavy artillery, dozens of howitzers and 144,000 rounds of ammunition,” Biden said in a brief speech at the White House. He said the new arms shipment is specifically aimed at helping Ukrainian forces fight in the flatter Donbass region. more open ground than where there had been fighting in the West before.
This video footage released by the Mariupol City Council on April 19, 2022 shows plumes of smoke rising over the Azovstal Steelworks and the destroyed gates of the Azov Shipyard as Russia continues its bid to take the besieged port city of Mariupol.
Biden said the new aid, on top of another $800 million package announced last week, “almost” exhausted Congressional approval for US military aid to Ukraine. But the president said he would soon be asking Congress for even more money for Ukraine’s armed forces.
Biden said the United States and its Western allies remain united in their determination to help Ukraine fight Russia President Vladimir Putin’s eight-week invasion.
“The most important thing is to keep the world united” against Russia, Biden said. “So far, so good.”
Biden promised that Putin “will never succeed in occupying all of Ukraine. Putin has not achieved his grand ambitions on the battlefield. Kyiv is still standing,” said the President.
New help for refugees
In other war-related actions, Biden said he was sending $500 million in new economic aid to Ukraine to streamline humanitarian efforts for refugees, so Ukrainians can escape the ravages of war at home and move more quickly to the United States if they so choose, according to the ban of all Russian ships to dock in American ports.
Earlier Thursday, Putin ordered his forces not to storm a steel plant in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, where the last remaining Ukrainian forces are holed up in the port on the north shore of the Sea of Azov.
At a televised meeting, Putin told Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu that Russian forces should blockade the facility “so a fly can’t get through,” and that pursuing a plan to storm the compound would unnecessarily endanger the Russian Troops.
Shoigu told Putin that 2,000 Ukrainian soldiers were at the Azovstal plant but the rest had been “liberated” from Mariupol, a key port city.
Biden claimed “there is no evidence Mariupol fell,” but weeks of Russian bombardment have leveled much of the city.
Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine Iryna Vereshchuk has urged Russia to allow the evacuation of wounded civilians and soldiers from the plant through a humanitarian corridor.
“There are about 1,000 civilians and 500 wounded soldiers. They must all be removed from Azovstal today,” Vereshchuk said in an online post on Thursday.
Vereshchuk also said four buses were able to evacuate civilians from Mariupol on Wednesday.
More than 100,000 Ukrainians are believed to be trapped in Mariupol, where 400,000 people lived before Russia invaded the country on February 24.
“The conditions there are really terrible,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said at a diplomatic conference in Panama on Wednesday. He stressed that attempts by humanitarian corridors to allow Mariupol residents to escape “collapsed very quickly.”
The battle for Mariupol is part of a broader Russian offensive in the strategically important Donbass region, where Moscow is increasing its military presence.
“Moscow’s current goal is to expand its control to the east and south. Ideally, they would like to take over Kharkiv and Odessa,” John Herbst, senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center and former US ambassador to Ukraine, told VOA. “But these are tough orders. They may have to settle for Mariupol.
On March 25, after losses in northern Ukraine, Moscow announced a major change in strategy, withdrawing troops from the north, including the suburbs of the capital Kyiv, to consolidate military gains in Donbass and establish a land bridge to the Crimean Peninsula. which he confiscated in 2014.
Analysts say that if Russian forces gain full control of Donbass, their diplomats will have a stronger hand in peace negotiations and will be in a better position to demand autonomy for the region.
“But even if (Putin) makes big strides in the East and South and agrees to a deal that puts him in control of his new gains, that doesn’t mean he will be satisfied,” Herbst said.
Analysts at the US Department of Defense say the battle over the Donbass region, where fighting has been going on since Moscow annexed Crimea in 2014, could continue for months.
The United States on Wednesday imposed fresh sanctions on dozens of other people and entities accused of evading financial sanctions imposed on Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine.
The Ministry of Finance is sanctioning Transkapitalbank, a major Russian commercial bank that has offered services to banks around the world to evade international sanctions, and more than 40 individuals and entities who are part of a Russian sanctions evasion network run by the Russian oligarch Konstantin Malofeyev. That’s what White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters.
Psaki said Washington has also imposed sanctions on companies in Russia’s virtual currency mining industry and imposed visa restrictions on more than 600 people in response to human rights abuses by Russia and Belarus.
Some of the information for this report comes from The Associated Press and Reuters.