- The battle for Mariupol was the biggest war battle
- Putin says Russia “liberated” the city.
- US sends newly developed “Ghost” drones to Ukraine
Kyiv, April 22 – Ukrainian fighters clung to their last redoubt in Mariupol on Friday after Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed victory in the biggest battle of the war and declared the port city ‘liberated’ after weeks of relentless bombardment .
However, the United States denied Putin’s claim and said it believed Ukrainian forces still had ground in the city. Putin ordered his troops to blockade a huge steel mill housing Ukrainians after refusing an ultimatum to surrender or die.
Ukraine said Putin wanted to avoid a final clash with his forces in Mariupol as he lacked troops to defeat them. But Ukrainian officials also asked for help evacuating civilians and wounded soldiers.
At a TV session in the Kremlin, Putin congratulated his defense minister and Russian troops on the “combat effort to liberate Mariupol” and said there was no need to storm the industrial zone containing the Azovstal Steel Plant.
“There is no need to climb into these catacombs and crawl underground through these industrial plants… Block off this industrial area so that not even a fly can get through,” Putin said.
Mariupol, a major port in Ukraine’s eastern Donbass region, lies between areas held by Russian separatists and Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula that Moscow captured in 2014. Taking the city would allow Russia to connect the two territories. Continue reading
Though Putin is demanding his first major prize since his troops were driven out of the capital Kyiv and northern Ukraine last month, he falls short of the clear victory Moscow sought after months of fighting in a city reduced to rubble.
In a late-night address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia was doing everything “to talk about at least some victories,” including mobilizing new tactical battalion groups.
“You can only postpone the inevitable – the moment when the invaders have to leave our territory, including from Mariupol, a city that continues to resist Russia, regardless of what the occupiers say,” Zelenskyy said.
Russia stepped up its attacks in eastern Ukraine this week and launched long-range strikes on other targets, including Kyiv and the western city of Lviv.
In an update early Friday, Ukraine’s General Staff said Russian forces had stepped up attacks along the entire front line in the east and were trying to launch an offensive in the Kharkiv region in the northeast.
Russia is calling 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 that has killed thousands and uprooted a quarter of Ukraine’s population.
The United States on Thursday approved an additional $800 million in military aid to Ukraine, including heavy artillery and newly discovered “ghost” drones, which will be destroyed after attacking their targets. Continue reading
“We are now in a critical window in which they will set the stage for the next phase of this war,” said US President Joe Biden.
When asked about Putin’s declaration of victory in Mariupol, State Department spokesman Ned Price said it was “more disinformation from their well-worn script.”
Mariupol, once home to 400,000 people, has seen not only the most intense battle of the war that began with the invasion of Russian troops on February 24, but also its worst humanitarian catastrophe.
Ukraine estimates that tens of thousands of civilians have died there. The United Nations and Red Cross say the number of civilian casualties is at least in the thousands.
Journalists who reached Mariupol during the siege found streets full of corpses, almost all buildings destroyed, and residents huddled in basements, venturing out to cook scraps of food or bury corpses in gardens.
Ukrainian fighters remain in the Azovstal steel complex, one of the largest metallurgical plants in Europe, covering 11 km² with huge buildings, underground bunkers and tunnels.
Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boichenko told Reuters that only Putin can decide the fate of the 100,000 civilians trapped in the city.
“The lives that are left are in the hands of only one person – Vladimir Putin. And all the deaths that will happen after that will also be in his hands,” Boichenko said in an interview. Continue reading
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said 1,000 civilians and 500 wounded soldiers needed to be evacuated from the plant immediately, blaming Russian forces for a failure to set up a safe corridor, which she said had been agreed.
Russia says it has taken in 140,000 civilians from Mariupol in humanitarian evacuations. Ukraine says some were forcibly deported, which would constitute a war crime.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has proposed a four-day humanitarian lull in fighting during the Orthodox Easter period. Both Ukrainians and Russians are predominantly Orthodox Christians and celebrate Easter Sunday on April 24th.
A Ukrainian religious group also proposed an Easter peace, and the head of Ukraine’s Orthodox Church urged Ukrainians to forego nightly Easter services amid fears of Russian bombardment. Continue reading
But Zelenskyy said Russia had rejected the proposal to conclude a ceasefire at Easter. There was no immediate Russian comment.
reporting by Reuters journalists; writing by Rami Ayyub and Stephen Coates; Edited by Himani Sarkar and Kim Coghill