- Russia calls on Ukrainians at the Mariupol plant to lay down their arms
- USA, Great Britain, Canada, France and Germany promise more help
- The US is planning a new military aid package in the next few days – sources
Kyiv/KHARKOV, April 20 – Russia issued a new ultimatum to Ukrainian militants still in Mariupol to surrender on Wednesday, while pressing for a decisive victory in its new eastern offensive, while Western governments warned Kyiv more promised military aid.
Thousands of Russian troops, supported by artillery and rocket fire, advanced into what Ukrainian officials dubbed the Battle of Donbass.
Russia’s nearly eight-week invasion has failed to capture one of Ukraine’s largest cities, forcing Moscow to refocus on and around separatist regions.
However, the largest attack on a European country since 1945 has displaced almost 5 million people abroad and reduced cities to rubble.
Russia has hit the Azovstal Steel Plant, the main remaining fortress in Mariupol, with bunker-busting bombs, an aide to Ukraine’s president said late Tuesday. Reuters could not verify the details.
“The world looks at the murder of children online and is silent,” wrote advisor Mykhailo Podolyak on Twitter.
After an earlier ultimatum to surrender elapsed and midnight approached, the Russian Defense Ministry said not a single Ukrainian soldier had laid down their arms and renewed the suggestion. Ukrainian commanders have vowed not to surrender.
“Russia’s armed forces, based on purely humanitarian principles, once again propose that fighters of nationalist battalions and foreign mercenaries cease their military operations and lay down arms on April 20 at 2:00 p.m. Moscow time,” the Russian Defense Ministry said.
The United States, Canada and Britain said they would send more artillery pieces.
“We will continue to provide them with more ammunition as we will provide them with more military assistance,” White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said, adding that new sanctions are being prepared.
US President Joe Biden is expected to announce a new military aid package in the coming days in the magnitude of last week’s $800 million, multiple sources told Reuters.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for a four-day humanitarian lull in fighting next weekend, when Orthodox Christians celebrate Easter, to allow civilians to flee and provide humanitarian aid.
Russia said it launched a so-called “military special operation” on February 24 to demilitarize and “denazify” Ukraine. Kyiv and its western allies dismiss this as a false pretext.
CITY CAPTURED
A rescuer works in a residential building damaged during the Ukraine-Russia conflict in the southern port city of Mariupol, Ukraine, April 19, 2022. REUTERS/Alexander Ermochenko
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Ukraine said the new attack led to the capture of Kreminna, an administrative center of 18,000 people in Luhansk, one of the two Donbass provinces.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov confirmed that “another phase of this operation is beginning”.
After being pushed back by Ukrainian forces from an attack on Kyiv in the north in March, Russia has instead sent troops east for the Donbass offensive. It has also conducted long-range attacks on other targets, including the capital.
Coal- and steel-producing Donbass has been the focus of Russia’s campaign to destabilize Ukraine since 2014, when the Kremlin installed proxies to establish separatist “people’s republics” in parts of Luhansk and Donetsk provinces.
In Mariupol, the scene of the war’s heaviest fighting and worst humanitarian disaster, about 120 civilians living next to the sprawling Azovstal Steel Plant left the site via humanitarian corridors, the Interfax news agency reported on Tuesday, citing Russian state television.
Mariupol has been under siege since the beginning of the war. Tens of thousands of residents are trapped without access to food or water, and the streets are littered with bodies. Ukraine believes more than 20,000 civilians have died there.
“The Russian army will forever inscribe itself in world history as perhaps the most barbaric and inhumane army in the world,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a video address.
“The deliberate killing of civilians, the destruction of neighborhoods and civilian infrastructure, and the use of all types of weapons, including those prohibited by international conventions, is already the hallmark of the Russian army.”
Russia has denied using prohibited weapons or attacking civilians in its invasion of Ukraine and says without evidence signs of atrocities were staged.
The video released by Ukraine’s Azov Battalion is said to show people living in the underground network beneath the steel mill, where hundreds of women, children and elderly civilians are sheltering with dwindling supplies.
“We lost our homes, we lost our livelihoods. We want to live a normal, peaceful life. We want out of here,” says an unidentified woman in the video.
“There are many children here – they are hungry. Get us out of here, we beg you. We’ve already cried all the tears we have. We can’t cry anymore,” she added.
Reuters could not independently verify where or when the video was filmed.
Kyiv and Moscow have not held face-to-face talks since March 29. Each side blames the other for its collapse.
“Obviously, against the background of the Mariupol tragedy, the negotiation process has become even more complicated,” Ukrainian Presidential Advisor Podolyak told Reuters.
reporting by Reuters journalists; Writing Lincoln Feast; Editing by Himani Sarkar