Russian forces attacked the vital port of Odesa, Ukrainian officials said Tuesday, in an apparent attempt to cut off supply routes and weapons deliveries. At the other end of the southern coast, they hit a steel plant where Ukrainian fighters were preventing Moscow from taking full control of another major port.
Days after the dramatic rescue of what some officials described as the last civilians trapped at the Mariupol plant, authorities said about 100 remained in the network of tunnels under Russian bombardment. Meanwhile, the high cost of the war was beginning to be known and the Ukrainian authorities announced the discovery of 44 dead civilians in the rubble of a destroyed building in the northeast weeks ago.
The Ukrainian military said on Tuesday that Russian forces had launched seven missiles from the air at Odesa the day before, hitting a shopping center and a warehouse. One person was killed and five were injured, the army said.
Ukraine said at least some of the ammunition was Soviet, reducing the accuracy of the strikes. However, the Center for Defense Strategy, a Ukrainian think tank that follows the war, indicated that Moscow had indeed used some precision weapons in Odesa, specifically Kinzhal missiles, or “Dagger”, a type of air-to-air hypersonic missile. land.
Ukrainian, British and American officials warn that Russia is rapidly using up its stockpiles of precision weapons and may not be able to make more quickly, raising the risk that it will use unguided rockets as the conflict drags on. That could increase civilian casualties and other collateral damage.
After Russian President Vladimir Putin’s forces failed to take Kyiv in the early days of the war, the president has said his priority is Donbas, Ukraine’s industrial heartland in the east of the country. However, one General has said that Moscow’s goals also include isolating Ukraine from its entire Black Sea coast.
That would give it a stretch of territory connecting Moscow with the Crimean Peninsula, annexed in 2014, and Transnistria, a pro-Russian independence region in Moldova.
Although it does not achieve the objective of cutting off Ukraine’s access to the Black Sea – and it does not seem to have the strength to do so – the missile attacks that Odesa continues to suffer reflect the importance of the city as a strategic transport hub.
The Russian army has repeatedly attacked the city’s airport and claims to have destroyed several shipments of Western weapons that have been crucial to the Ukrainian resistance.
Odesa, Ukraine’s largest port, is also a major departure point for grain shipments, and the Russian blockade on the city already threatens global food supplies. The city is a cultural jewel appreciated by Russians and Ukrainians and with great symbolism.
The latest attacks occurred on the same day that Russian President Vladimir Putin celebrated his country’s most important patriotic holiday without being able to boast of new successes on the battlefield. The president watched troops and military equipment parade through Moscow’s Red Square on Victory Day, which commemorates the Soviet Union’s role in defeating Nazi Germany in 1945.
A symbol of Russia’s difficulties was the city of Mariupol, where Russian forces have been trying for weeks to break the Ukrainian defenders in their last redoubt.
Petro Andryushchenko, an adviser to the city’s mayor, estimated on social media that at least 100 civilians were still trapped underground at the Azovstal steel mill. Russian and Ukrainian authorities had earlier said that a convoy over the weekend had carried out the third evacuation of hundreds of civilians from the site to a city controlled by Kyiv.
For his part, Donetsk regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said on Tuesday that those civilians were people “that the Russians have not selected” for evacuation. At first, it was unclear how the two officials knew that. The fighters at the plant had not confirmed these reports.
Ukrainian and Russian authorities had earlier said that all civilians at the steel mill had been evacuated.
As Russian forces struggle to gain ground in Donbas, military analysts have suggested attacking Odesa could serve to heighten their concern over southwestern Ukraine and force Kyiv to move more troops there. That would draw his forces away from the eastern front, where the army is striking back near the city of Kharkiv and trying to push the Russian contingent across the border.
Kharkiv and its surroundings have been under constant Russian attack since the war began in late February. Dozens of bodies were found in a five-story building that collapsed in March in Izium, about 120 kilometers (75 miles) from the city of Kharkiv, said Oleh Synehubov, the region’s governor.
Ilium is located on a crucial route in the Donbas industrial region of eastern Ukraine, where the Russian offensive is now focused. Synehubov did not specify where the property was located.
Ukraine’s military also warned on Tuesday that Russia could attack the country’s chemical industry. Ukraine’s General Staff did not explain the claim in its report, although there have been Russian attacks on fuel depots and other industrial facilities during the war.
‘IMPOSSIBLE’ TO RESCUE BELOGOROVKA SCHOOL VICTIMS, ACCORDING TO UKRAINE
Ukrainian sources said Monday that it is “impossible” at the moment to remove the bodies of the 60 victims of Saturday’s Russian attack on the Belogorovka school from under the rubble of the building.
“We can’t even get the 60 people out from under the rubble because the place is constantly under attack,” Serhiy Haidai, head of the military administration of Lugansk province, said on Telegram.
“Now we see how Russia seeks the ‘liberation of Donbas’, destroying everything,” denounced the governor of the eastern region, in which a Russian offensive is taking place.
According to Ukrainian sources, a Russian plane yesterday bombed the school in the town of Belogorovka, where some 90 people were sheltering at the time of the attack.
27 people were rescued alive, seven of them injured, while two bodies were dug up from under the rubble.
According to Haidai, there is little hope that any of the 60 missings will be rescued alive, as the bomb exploded inside the building, causing a fire and removing all oxygen.
The town of Belogorovka is close to the city of Lysychansk, which Russian troops are trying to cap.
ATTACK ON STEELWORKS IN MARIUPOL
Pale and exhausted, the last civilians to shelter in bunkers under the massive steel plant in the decimated Ukrainian port city of Mariupol arrived Sunday night in Zaporizhia, the first major Ukrainian city beyond the front line.
The steel mill, where an estimated 2,000 Ukrainian fighters are fighting what appears to be their last battle, is the only part of the city not under Russian control. Thanks to its maze of tunnels and underground bunkers, many civilians had chosen it as the safest place to shelter from the incessant Russian shelling of Mariupol, once a thriving port city that has been largely reduced to rubble.
The emaciated survivors spoke of constant shelling, food shortages, and ever-present mold. They had to use hand sanitizer as fuel to cook.
Ten buses slowly entered the dark and deserted streets of Zaporizhia, bringing 174 evacuees from the Mariupol area. Among them were more than 30 of the 51 civilians evacuated during the last day from the Azovstal steelworks. Both Ukrainian and Russian officials have said that these civilians are the last non-combatants in the industrial complex.
“It was terrible to be in the bunkers,” said Lyubov Andropova, 69, who had been sheltering at the Azovstal plant since March 10. “Water was running from the roofs. There was mold everywhere. We were worried about the children, about their lungs.”
The shelling was constant and we feared “that our bunker would collapse,” he said. “Everything was shaking. We do not go out”. Just days after the Russian invasion of Ukraine began on February 24, Dmytro Sviydakov took refuge in the bunkers with his wife and his 12-year-old daughter. They entered Azovstal on February 27. It would be more than two months before they could get out.
He commented that the first month and a half was bearable. Between 50 and 60 people crowded into a bunker, but then Russian attacks intensified. They blew up a food storage area, so he and others resorted to picking up debris, including searching workers’ lockers.
Cooking fuel was also in short supply, but then they found that hand sanitizer, plentiful due to the coronavirus pandemic, was a good substitute. “What can’t you do when you have nothing?” she said, as she waited for a bus that would take evacuees from Azovstal to temporary accommodation in Zaporizhia.
Yehor, a steelworks employee who took refuge in the bunker and who gave only his last name, said he took refuge in the bunker with his two children, his wife, and their dog. He said that when food was scarce, the soldiers defending Azovstal helped them.
“We wouldn’t have done it any other way,” he said. “I don’t know how long we could have survived, but we sure as hell wouldn’t have survived until today.” In the last days, they only had pasta, water, and some spices, barely enough for one soup a day.
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