- Hundreds of Ukrainian marines surrender in Mariupol, Russia says
- The fall of the industrial zone would give the Russians control of the port
- Thousands are said to have been killed during the nearly seven-week siege
LVIV, Ukraine, April 13 – More than a thousand Ukrainian marines have surrendered in the besieged Ukrainian port of Mariupol, Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Wednesday about Moscow’s main target in the eastern Donbass region, which it has yet to bring under its control .
If the Russians capture the Azovstal industrial area where the Marines are holed up, they would have full control of Mariupol, the linchpin between Russian-held areas to the west and east, providing a land corridor for troops and supplies. Continue reading
It would be the first major city to fall victim to Russian forces since they invaded Ukraine on February 24.
The General Staff of Ukraine said Russian forces are continuing attacks on Azovstal and the port. The spokesman for Ukraine’s defense ministry said he had no information about a surrender. Continue reading
Reuters journalists accompanying Russian-backed separatists saw flames erupting from Azovstal district on Tuesday.
Thousands are believed to have been killed in a nearly seven-week siege of Mariupol and Russia has massed thousands of troops in the region for a new attack, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.
Ukraine says tens of thousands of civilians were trapped in that city with no way to bring in food or water and accused Russia of blocking aid convoys.
According to the Russian Defense Ministry, 1,026 soldiers of Ukraine’s 36th Naval Brigade surrendered.
Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, an ardent supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin, called on the remaining Ukrainians holed up in Azovstal to surrender.
“There are currently about 200 wounded in Azovstal who cannot receive medical assistance,” Kadyrov said in a Telegram post. “It would be better for them and everyone else to end this pointless resistance and go home to their families.”
Russian television showed footage of marines surrendering Tuesday at Illich Iron and Steel Works in Mariupol, many of them wounded.
It reportedly showed Ukrainian soldiers marching down a street with their hands raised. One of the soldiers was shown with a Ukrainian passport.
GENOCIDE CHARGE
Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, the largest attack on a European state since 1945, has resulted in more than 4.6 million people fleeing abroad, thousands killed or wounded and Russia becoming increasingly isolated on the world stage.
Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office said 191 children had been killed and 349 injured since the invasion began.
The Kremlin says it has launched a “military special operation” to demilitarize and “denazify” Ukraine. Kyiv and its western allies dismiss this as a false pretext for an unprovoked attack.
Service members of pro-Russian troops ride an armored vehicle during fighting in the Ukraine-Russia conflict near a plant of the Azovstal Iron and Steel Works Company in the southern port city of Mariupol, Ukraine, April 12, 2022. REUTERS/Alexander Ermochenko
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The presidents of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia are on their way to Kyiv to meet Zelenskyy, an aide to the Polish head of state said on Wednesday.
The four join a growing number of European politicians to visit the Ukrainian capital since Russian troops were driven out of the north of the country earlier this month.
US President Joe Biden said for the first time that Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine amounted to genocide, as Putin said Russia will continue its operation “rhythmically and calmly” and achieve its goals.
Russia has denied attacking civilians, saying Ukrainian and Western war crimes allegations are fabricated.
Many cities in northern Ukraine from which Russia has withdrawn have been littered with the bodies of civilians killed in what Kiev says has been a campaign of murder, torture and rape.
‘QUIET’ OPERATION
The Ukrainian news agency Interfax quoted the police chief of the Kyiv district on Wednesday as saying that 720 bodies had been found in the region around the capital and more than 200 people were missing.
The Headquarters of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said that Russian forces are continuing attacks on civilian infrastructure in the Kharkiv region of northeast and the Zaporizhia region of central Ukraine.
At least seven people have been killed and 22 injured in Kharkiv in the past 24 hours, said Governor Oleh Synegubov. A 2-year-old boy was among those killed in 53 artillery or rocket attacks carried out by Russian forces in the region, he said in an online post.
Reuters could not independently verify the information.
Russia denies attacks on civilians. Putin on Tuesday used his first public statements on the conflict in more than a week to say that Russia would continue its operation “rhythmically and calmly” and expressed confidence that his goals would be met.
Zelenskyi mocked Putin in an early-morning speech: “How could a plan come about that envisages the deaths of tens of thousands of our own soldiers in just over a month of war?”
The attack on Donbas’ industrial heartland sets the stage for a protracted struggle that is sure to inflict heavy casualties on both sides and ultimately determine the course of the war, analysts said.
Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar said there was a high risk of Russia using chemical weapons, echoing earlier warnings by Zelenskyy.
The manufacture, use and stockpiling of chemical weapons is prohibited under the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention.
Russia denied using chemical weapons and said it destroyed its last chemical stockpile in 2017.
Reporting by Reuters bureaus; writing by Michael Perry and Nick Macfie; Edited by Stephen Coates, Simon Cameron-Moore and Alex Richardson