KHARKIV, Ukraine (AP) – Ukrainian forces have been struggling to fend off Russian attempts to advance south and east, where the Kremlin is trying to seize the country’s industrial Donbass region, and a senior US defense official said Moscow’s offensive is going big slower than planned.
While artillery fire, sirens and explosions could be heard in some cities on Friday, the United Nations tried to broker an evacuation of civilians from the increasingly hellish ruins of Mariupol, where the mayor assessed the situation at the steel mill that has become the southern port city’s last , described fortress is bad.
Citizens “beg to be saved,” Mayor Vadym Boichenko said. “It’s not a matter of days. It’s a matter of hours.”
For other developments:
– A former US Marine was killed while fighting alongside Ukrainian forces, his family said, in what would be the first known combat death of an American in the war. The US has not confirmed the report.
– The mayor of the city of Popasna in eastern Ukraine, Nikolai Khanatov, says that two buses going there to evacuate residents were shot at and that contact with the drivers was lost.
— Ukrainian forces are cracking down on people accused of helping Russian troops. In the Kharkiv region alone, nearly 400 people have been arrested under anti-collaboration laws enacted after the February 24 invasion of Moscow.
— The international sanctions imposed because of the war against the Kremlin are putting the country under pressure. The Central Bank of Russia said Russia’s economy is expected to contract by up to 10% this year and the outlook is “extremely uncertain”.
It has been difficult to get a full picture of the unfolding battle to the east, as airstrikes and artillery barrage have made it extremely dangerous for reporters to move about. Both Ukraine and Moscow-backed rebels fighting in the east have also imposed severe restrictions on reporting from the combat zone.
But so far, Russia’s troops and the separatists appear to have made little gains.
Partly because of the strength of the Ukrainian resistance, the US believes the Russians are “at least a few days behind where they wanted to be” as they try to encircle Ukrainian troops in the east, said the senior US defense official, who spoke on conditions of the Anonymity to discuss the assessment of the American military.
While Russian troops are attempting to advance north from Mariupol to counter Ukrainian forces from the south, their advances are “slow and uneven and certainly not decisive,” the official said.
The UK MoD made a similar assessment, saying it believes Russian forces in Ukraine are likely to suffer from “lower morale,” along with a lack of unit-level capabilities and “inconsistent air support.”
Russian forces are “forced to merge and redeploy exhausted and disparate units from the failed pushes in northeastern Ukraine,” the ministry said in a tweet on Saturday as part of a daily report on the war. She did not say on what basis she made the assessment.
In the bombed city of Mariupol, around 100,000 people are said to have been trapped with little food, water or medicine. An estimated 2,000 Ukrainian defenders and 1,000 civilians were holed up at the Azovstal Steel Plant.
The Soviet-era steel mill has a vast network of underground bunkers that can withstand air raids. But the situation has gotten worse after the Russians dropped “bunker busters” and other bombs.
“Locals who manage to leave Mariupol say it’s hell, but when they leave this fortress they say it’s worse,” the mayor said.
UN spokesman Farhan Haq said the organization is negotiating with authorities in Moscow and Kyiv to secure safe passage.
This time, “let’s hope the enemy has a touch of humanity,” the mayor said. Ukraine has blamed the failure of numerous previous evacuation attempts on continued Russian shelling.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya TV that the real problem is that “humanitarian corridors are being ignored by Ukrainian ultranationalists.” Moscow has repeatedly claimed that right-wing Ukrainians are thwarting evacuation efforts and using civilians as human shields.
In additional comments released by China’s official Xinhua news agency on Saturday, Lavrov said Russia had evacuated over a million people from Ukraine since the war began, including more than 300 Chinese civilians.
Ukraine has accused Moscow of forcibly sending Ukrainians out of the country.
Lavrov also said that Russian and Ukrainian negotiators speak to each other “almost every day” but blamed “bellicose rhetoric and seditious actions by Western supporters of the Kiev regime” for disrupting the discussions.
Fighting was heard from Kramatorsk to Sloviansk, two cities in the Donbass about 18 kilometers apart. Columns of smoke rose from the Sloviansk region and neighboring cities. At least one person was injured in the shelling.
In his nightly video address, Zelenskyy accused Russia of destroying the Donbass and everyone who lives there.
The constant attacks “show that Russia wants to clear this territory of all people,” he said.
“If the Russian invaders can even partially realize their plans, then they will have enough artillery and aircraft to turn the entire Donbass to stones, as they did with Mariupol.”
Ukrainian troops in the Luhansk region of Donbas repelled an attack by Russian airborne troops and killed most of their unit, the governor said.
“Only seven of the intruders survived,” Governor Serhiy Haidai said on Telegram on Friday. The claim could not be immediately confirmed.
He did not say where the attack took place, but said Russian forces are preparing to attack Severodonetsk.
In a neighborhood on the outskirts of Kharkov that’s regularly shelled by Russian forces, some residents are staying in their apartments, though the buildings have charred, gaping holes. There’s no running water or electricity, so they gather outside to cook on the open flame.
Ukrainian reservists, who are staying in a nearby basement, say the Russians hit the buildings with rockets, artillery and tank fire.
“A tank can come in close range and fire all of its ammo at residential areas. It doesn’t matter where. And it’s impossible to find out where it will shoot,” said Vladislav, who, like others in the unit, only gave his first name. “There is nothing here apart from residential buildings, schools and kindergartens.”
Most of the reservists had civilian jobs before the start of the war and claimed to have taken up arms when the Russians invaded.
“If your city is being destroyed, if people are being killed near you, there is no other option,” said a reservist named Ihor.
Another reservist, nicknamed Malysh, expressed frustration at not being able to do more to stop the Russian advance.
“I took up arms, but unfortunately I can’t catch and throw back missiles in flight with my bare hands,” he said.
In the nearby village of Ruska Lozava, hundreds of people were evacuated after Ukrainian troops retook the town from the Russian occupiers, according to the regional governor. Those who fled to Kharkiv spoke of dire conditions under the Russians, with little water, food and no electricity.
“We hid in the basement. It was horror. The basement shook from the explosions. We screamed, we cried and we prayed to God,” said Ludmila Bocharnikova.
Former US Marine Willy Joseph Cancel, 22, was killed Monday while working for a military company that sent him to Ukraine, his mother Rebecca Cabrera told CNN.
“He wanted to go over because he believed in what Ukraine was fighting for,” she said, “and he wanted to be a part of that, to contain it there, so it wouldn’t come here, and that maybe our American soldiers would.” You don’t have to be involved in that.”
The Marine Corps said Cancel served four years but was fired for misconduct and sentenced to five months for violating orders. Details of the crime were not given.
At least two other foreigners fighting on the Ukrainian side, one from Britain and the other from Denmark, were also killed.
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Associated Press journalists Jon Gambrell and Yuras Karmanau in Lviv, Mstyslav Chernov in Kharkiv, Yesica Fisch in Sloviansk, Lolita C. Baldor in Washington, and AP staffers around the world contributed to this report.
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