- Ukraine seeks talks on evacuations from Azovstal Steel Plant
- The number of people fleeing Ukraine now exceeds 5 million
- Biden announces address as US prepares more aid
April 21 – A top ally of President Vladimir Putin said Russian forces will capture the last main resistance stronghold in the besieged city of Mariupol on Thursday, after Ukraine proposed talks to evacuate troops and civilians there .
Mariupol would be the largest city to be seized by Russia since it invaded Ukraine eight weeks ago, in an attack that lasted longer than some military analysts expected, more than five million people fled abroad and cities were reduced to rubble have laid ashes.
“Before lunch or after lunch, Azovstal will be completely under the control of the Russian Federation Armed Forces,” Ramzan Kadyrov, the head of Russia’s Chechen Republic, whose forces have been fighting in Ukraine, said of the steel mill.
The Ukrainian Defense Ministry could not immediately be reached for comment. The Joint Chiefs of Staff said in an update early Thursday that rocket and bomb attacks continued across the country.
The southeastern port city of Mariupol has weathered the war’s fiercest fighting as besieging Russian forces attempt to take full control. Its capture would be a major strategic asset, linking territory held by pro-Russian separatists in the east with the Crimea region annexed by Moscow in 2014.
According to Reuters witnesses, a few dozen civilians managed to leave the city in a small convoy of buses on Wednesday.
A Ukrainian naval commander, Serhiy Volny, said fighters at the steel mills might not be able to hold out much longer. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said an estimated 1,000 civilians are sheltering there.
Ukraine is ready for a “special round of negotiations” with no strings attached “to save our people…military, civilians, children, the living and the wounded,” negotiator Mykhailo Podolyak said on Twitter.
Kyiv has proposed exchanging Russian POWs for safe passage for captured civilians and soldiers. It was not known whether Russia had responded to the offer of special negotiations.
Fighters remain entrenched at the facility and have ignored an ultimatum by Russia to surrender.
BIDEN ADDRESS
Elsewhere in the east, Ukraine said it held off an attack by Russian forces trying to advance in the so-called Battle of Donbass, a new campaign to seize two eastern provinces Moscow is claiming on behalf of separatists.
Russian forces have attacked dozens of military installations in the east and shot down a Ukrainian Mi-8 helicopter near the village of Koroviy Yar, the Russian Defense Ministry said.
British military intelligence said Russian forces were keen to demonstrate a significant success through a World War II commemoration on May 9 and provided close-range support for the offensive to the east, where Russian forces were advancing on the town of Kramatorsk.
Putin said Wednesday’s first test launch of Russia’s Sarmat ICBM, a new and long-awaited addition to its nuclear arsenal, would “provide food for thought for those who, in the heat of maniacally aggressive rhetoric, seek to threaten our country.” Read more
Russia calls its invasion a “special military operation” to demilitarize and “denazify” Ukraine. Kyiv and its western allies reject this as a false pretext for a war by choice.
The West has imposed unprecedented sanctions on Russia and provided extensive assistance, including arms, to Ukraine.
US President Joe Biden will provide an update on Ukraine at 1345 GMT as he works to finalize a new weapons package likely to be of a similar size to an $800 million package announced last week, a US official said Official.
G7 finance ministers said at a meeting on Wednesday that Russia should stop attending international forums this week, including meetings of the G20, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Continue reading
Top officials from Britain, the United States and Canada outperformed Russia’s representatives at a Group of 20 meeting in Washington, revealing deep divisions in the big-economy bloc. Continue reading
‘NIGHTMARE’
Mariupol, once a prosperous coastal city of 400,000 people, is now a wasteland where corpses lie in the streets while Russia bombs the Azovstal Steel Plant with bunker-busting bombs, the government in Kyiv said.
Deputy commander of the Ukrainian Azov regiment in Mariupol, Svyatoslav Kalamar, said several bunkers under the facility still held about 80 to 100 civilians each.
Black smoke billowed from the facility on Wednesday as evacuees queued to board buses.
Pensioner Tamara, 64, said she wanted to stay with her sister in Zaporizhia. She left with her husband, daughter, son-in-law and grandson.
“It’s my pleasure… to go after this nightmare. We lived in basements for 30 days,” she said through tears.
Russia denies attacking civilians and blames Ukraine for the failure of previous attempts to organize humanitarian corridors from Mariupol.
Russian forces pulled out of northern Ukraine after repelling an attack on Kyiv last month, but they have returned troops to the offensive in the east that began this week.
In the meantime, the peace negotiations have stalled.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said peace talks were likely to collapse and world leaders agreed this week on a call to continue arms supplies to Ukraine. Continue reading
reporting by Reuters journalists; writing by Costas Pitas and Stephen Coates; Edited by Grant McCool, Himani Sarkar and Kim Coghill