KHARKIV, Ukraine (AP) – Ukrainian forces fought village by village on Saturday to stem a Russian advance through the east of the country while the United Nations worked to broker a civilian evacuation from the last Ukrainian stronghold in the port city’s bombed ruins from Mariupol.
An estimated 100,000 civilians remain in the city, and up to 1,000 live under a sprawling Soviet-era steel mill, Ukrainian officials said. Ukraine hasn’t said how many fighters are also at the facility, the only part of Mariupol not occupied by Russian forces, but the Russians put the number at around 2,000.
Russian state news agencies reported on Saturday that 25 civilians had been evacuated from the Azovstal Steelworks, although there was no confirmation from the UN or Ukrainian officials. Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency said 19 adults and six children were taken from the factory but gave no further details.
Videos and images from inside the facility, provided to The Associated Press by two Ukrainian women who said their husbands were among the fighters who refused to surrender there, showed unidentified wounded men with stained bandages, that would have to be changed; others had open wounds or amputated limbs.
At least 600 wounded were treated by a medical skeleton staff, said the women, who identified their husbands as members of the Azov Regiment of the Ukrainian National Guard. Some of the wounds were rotted from gangrene, they said.
In the video shared by the women, the wounded men tell the camera that they eat once a day and share just 1.5 liters (50 ounces) of water a day among four. Supplies at the surrounded facility were exhausted, they said.
The AP has not been able to independently verify the date and location of the footage, which the women said was taken in the corridors beneath the steel mill last week.
A shirtless man spoke with evident pain as he described his wounds: two broken ribs, a punctured lung and a dislocated arm that “hung on the flesh.”
“I want to tell everyone who sees this. If you don’t stop this here in Ukraine, it will continue to Europe,” he said.
For other developments:
– Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in an interview that Russian and Ukrainian negotiators talk to each other “almost every day”. However, he told China’s state news agency Xinhua that “progress has not been easy.”
– 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.
– Two buses heading to the town of Popasna in eastern Ukraine to evacuate residents were fired upon and contact with the drivers was lost, Mayor Nikolai Khanatov said.
– A Russian missile attack destroyed the runway at the airport in Odessa, Ukraine’s third-most populous city and a key Black Sea port, the Ukrainian army said. Ukraine’s UNIAN news agency reported that “several” blasts were heard in Odessa on Saturday, prompting local authorities to advise residents to take shelter on the spot.
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.
However, Western military analysts have indicated that Moscow’s offensive in the eastern Donbass region, which includes Mariupol, has been much slower than planned. So far, Russian troops and the separatist forces Moscow has supported in the region since 2014 appear to have made little gains in the month since Moscow announced it would focus its military strength on eastern Ukraine.
In terms of numbers, Russia’s military manpower far exceeds that of Ukraine. In the days leading up to the war, Western intelligence estimated that Russia had up to 190,000 troops stationed near the border; The standing military of Ukraine is about 200,000 spread across the country.
Partly because of the stubbornness of the Ukrainian resistance, the US believes the Russians are “at least a few days behind where they wanted to be” as they attempt to encircle Ukrainian troops in the east, said a senior US defense official, speaking under conditions of the Anonymity to discuss the assessment of the American military.
With plenty of firepower still in reserve, Russia’s promised offensive could intensify and overrun the Ukrainians. In total, the Russian army has an estimated 900,000 active personnel. Russia also has a much larger air force and navy than Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed this in his nightly address.
“If the Russian invaders succeed in at least partially realizing their plans, they will still have enough artillery and aircraft to destroy the entire Donbass. Just like they destroyed Mariupol,” he said.
In Mariupol, around 100,000 people are said to be still in the city with little food, water or medicine. UN spokesman Farhan Haq said the organization is negotiating with authorities in Moscow and Kyiv to create conditions for safe passage.
Ukraine has blamed the failure of numerous previous evacuation attempts on continued Russian shelling.
The cruelty of the fighting has stunned the world. In the US, Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby got emotional on Friday when he spoke about the “brutality” and “depravity” of the invasion ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“It’s hard to look at what he’s doing in Ukraine, what his forces are doing in Ukraine, and to think that any ethically and morally minded person could justify that,” Kirby, a retired rear admiral, told reporters. “It’s difficult to look at some of the images and imagine that any thoughtful, serious, mature leader would do that. So I can’t talk to his psychology. But I think we can all talk about his depravity.”
An extensive underground network of tunnels and bunkers protects the employees of the Mariupol Steelworks from air raids. But the situation has gotten worse after the Russians dropped “bunker busters” and other bombs on the plant, the mayor said on Friday.
The women, who said their husbands were at the factory as part of the Azov regiment, said they feared soldiers would be tortured and killed if left behind and captured by the Russians. They requested a Dunkirk-style mission to evacuate the fighters, a reference to the World War II operation launched to rescue the surrounded Allied troops in northern France.
“We have to do this now,” Kateryna Prokopenko, 27, told AP in Rome.
The Azov Regiment, which helps defend the steel mill, has its roots in the Azov Battalion formed in 2014 by far-right activists at the start of the separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine. Russian officials have referred to the regiment’s past while trying to justify its activities in eastern Ukraine.
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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, Trisha Thompson in Rome, and AP staffers around the world contributed to this report.
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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine