KIEV/LEOPOLIS/MARIUPOL – Russian rocket attacks hit Ukraine’s capital Kyiv and other cities on Saturday Moscow claims its troops evacuated the Mariupol urban area and that only a small contingent of Ukrainian fighters remain at a steel mill in the besieged southern port.
The sustainability of Russia’s de facto control of Mariupol, scene of the war’s most intense fighting and worst humanitarian catastrophe, could not be independently verified. It would be the first major city to fall to Russian troops since the February 24 invasion.
“The situation is very difficult” in Mariupol said the President Volodymyr Zelensky at the news portal Ukrainska Pravda. “Our soldiers are isolated, the wounded are isolated. There is a humanitarian crisis… But the boys are fighting back.”
Russia’s Defense Ministry said if Ukrainian forces lay down their arms at the giant Azovstal Steelworks from 03:00 GMT on Sunday, her life would be spared, said the news agency Tass. No immediate reply came from Kyiv.
While Russia thereafter launched long-range missile strikes across the country the sinking of his flagship in the Black SeaMoscow said its fighter jets attacked a tank repair factory in Kyiv on Saturday.
An explosion was heard in the Darnytskyi district in the south-east of the country. The mayor said at least one person died and doctors were fighting to save others.
The Ukrainian military said that Russian warplanes departing from Belarus fired missiles at the Leonpolis region near the Polish border and that four cruise missiles were shot down by Ukrainian air defenses.
The Western town has so far been relatively spared and is home to refugees and international aid organizations.
In Mariupol, Reuters journalists encountered in Russian-held districts came to the Ilyich Steelworks, one of two metallurgical plants where defenders held out in underground tunnels and bunkers. Moscow claimed to have captured them on Friday.
The factory was reduced to twisted steel and blasted concrete, with not a trace of defenders. Several civilian bodies lay scattered in the surrounding streets.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said its troops “completely cleared” the Mariupol urban area of Ukrainian forces and isolated the “rest” at the Azovstal Steel Plant, the RIA news agency said. According to the agency, Ukrainian forces had lost more than 4,000 soldiers in the city as of Saturday.
Later on Saturday Zelenskyy accused Russia of “deliberately trying to destroy everyone” in Mariupol and said his government is in contact with the defenders. But he did not refer to Moscow’s claim that Ukrainian forces are no longer in urban areas.
The governor of eastern Kharkiv province said at least one person was killed and 18 injured in a missile attack. Smoke billowed from burning cars and the remains of an office building in the city.
In Mykolaiv, a town near the southern front, Russia said it had attacked a military vehicle repair factory.
The attacks came after Russia announced on Friday that it would step up long-range strikes in retaliation for unspecified acts of “sabotage” and “terrorism,” hours after it confirmed the sinking of its Black Sea flagship, the Moskva.
Kyiv and Washington say the ship, the sinking of which has become a symbol of Ukrainian resistance, was hit by Ukrainian missiles. Moscow says it sank after a fire and its crew of about 500 were evacuated.
The Russian Defense Ministry released a video showing naval chief Admiral Nikolai Yevmenov meeting on a parade ground with a hundred sailors, whom he describes as crew members.
A month and a half after President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, Russia is trying to gain territory in the south and east after retreating from the north after an attack on Kyiv was repelled on the outskirts of the capital.
Russian troops retreating from the north have left towns strewn with the bodies of civilians, evidence of what US President Joe Biden called genocide this week.
Russia denies attacking civilians and says the goal of its “military special operation” is to disarm its neighbor, defeat nationalists and protect separatists in the southeast.
“MARIUPOL WILL ALWAYS BE UKRAINE”
If Mariupol falls, it would be Russia’s greatest loot yet in the war. It is the main port of the Donbass, a bi-provincial region in the southeast that Moscow is demanding ceded entirely to the separatists.
The owner of the two huge steel plants in Mariupol, Ukraine’s richest man Rinat Akhmetov, promised to rebuild the city. “Mariupol was and always will be a Ukrainian city,” Akhmetov told Reuters.
Ukraine says it has so far resisted Russian advances in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, where at least one person was killed by shelling overnight.
Ukraine’s military command in the east of the country, where Kyiv says it expects a full-scale attack, said in a Facebook post that it repelled 10 attacks on Saturday, destroying 15 tanks, 24 other armored vehicles and three artillery systems. Reuters could not independently verify the report.
Zelenskyi told Ukrainian journalists that the world should be prepared for the possibility of Russia using nuclear weapons. He did not provide any evidence of this sustainability.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said last month that Russia would only resort to nuclear weapons in the event of an “existential threat” to the country and not because of the Ukraine conflict.
A Zelenskyi adviser said the country needs faster arms shipments from its European Union partners.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said its anti-aircraft systems in the Odessa region shot down a Ukrainian transport plane delivering weapons supplied by Western governments. He didn’t provide any evidence. There was no immediate comment from Kyiv.
Zelenskyy said that between 2,500 and 3,000 Ukrainian soldiers and up to 20,000 Russians had been killed so far. Moscow has not provided updated information on its victims since March 25, when 1,351 people were killed. Western estimates of Russian casualties are much higher.
Ukraine claims it is impossible to count civilian deaths and estimates at least 20,000 dead in Mariupol alone.
(Reporting by Pavel Polityuk in Kyiv, Hamuda Hassan and Marko Djurica in Lysychansk, Reuters journalists in Mariupol and Reuters correspondents around the world; writing by Peter Graff, Conor Humphries and Matt Spetalnick; editing in Spanish by Ricardo Figueroa)