A fresh UN convoy was due in Mariupol on Friday to rescue inhabitants from the “bleak hell” of a besieged steel mill, which has become the city’s final pocket of resistance against invading Russian soldiers.
The Russian military declared a three-day cease-fire at the location on Thursday, but a Ukrainian general claimed there was still continuous combat inside the massive Azovstal complex, where hundreds of soldiers and civilians have been holed up for weeks under heavy shelling.
Russia has focused its efforts on Ukraine’s east and south ten weeks into a war that has killed hundreds, damaged towns, and displaced more than 13 million people, and complete control of the now-flattened Mariupol would be a big triumph for Moscow.
“A convoy is its route to Azovstal, perhaps by tomorrow morning, to welcome those people who remain in that grim hell,” UN humanitarian head Martin Griffiths said at a Ukraine donor conference in Warsaw on Thursday.
The mayor of Mariupol thinks that roughly 200 citizens are still hiding in the plant’s Soviet-era subterranean tunnels in deplorable circumstances.
“We still need to remove people, including women and children, from there. Consider this: after more than two months of unrelenting bombardment and killing, “In his evening address on Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stated.
According to AFP, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is “doing a safe passage operation” in collaboration with the United Nations. The two organisations have previously collaborated to remove around 100 individuals from the facility.
According to the Kremlin, Russian President Vladimir Putin told Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Thursday that his military was ready to enable people to escape.
“As for the remaining militants at Azovstal, the Kyiv authorities must issue an order for them to lay down their guns,” Putin added.
In a video posted on Telegram, the leader of the Azov battalion guarding the plant stated that there was still considerable bloodshed.
“The Russians broke the truce commitment by refusing to enable the evacuation of people who are still hiding from bombardment in the plant’s basement,” Svyatoslav Palamar stated.
– Pentagon denial –
After failing to capture Kyiv early in its invasion, which began on February 24, Russia has shifted its emphasis to Ukraine’s east and south.
Taking control of Mariupol, which is strategically positioned, would allow Moscow to build a land bridge between the rebel pro-Russian territories of eastern Ukraine and Crimea, which it annexed in 2014.
The Kremlin said on Thursday that Kyiv’s Western allies had postponed a rapid conclusion to Moscow’s campaign by sharing intelligence and weaponry with Ukraine, but that it was “incapable of obstructing the achievement” of Russia’s military operation.
The United States is one of Ukraine’s most important allies, providing billions of dollars in military equipment and ammunition, as well as information and training.
However, in order to avoid inciting Russia into a wider confrontation outside Ukraine, the White House has worked to conceal public understanding of the entire scope of its aid.
Washington rejected on Thursday an astonishing claim in The New York Times that it assisted Ukraine in targeting Russian generals.
“The United States supplies combat information to assist Ukrainians in defending their nation,” said Adrienne Watson, a spokesman for the National Security Council.
“We do not supply intelligence with the goal of assassinating Russian generals.”
Separately, US media claimed Thursday that the US contributed intelligence that assisted Ukraine in sinking the Russian cruiser Moskva last month.
A US source, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told AFP that the US does not “give detailed targeting information on ships.”
– Fiji seizes oligarch’s yacht –
Ukraine’s government estimates that it will take at least $600 billion to restore the country after the conflict.
President Zelensky, who has diligently pushed for allies’ assistance, created a worldwide crowdfunding portal called United24 on Thursday to assist Ukraine in winning the war and rebuilding its infrastructure.
According to Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, more than six billion euros ($6.3 billion) were gathered during a donors’ meeting in Warsaw on Thursday.
In addition to financial and military help, Ukraine’s partners have imposed unprecedented sanctions on Russia for the invasion.
In one of the most recent such steps, the British government said on Thursday that it had blocked the assets of UK-based steel and mining corporation Evraz due to its vital importance to Russia’s war effort.
Evraz’s primary stakeholder is Russian tycoon Roman Abramovich, who is already sanctioned, and the company’s primary activities are in Russia.
In another step against Putin-connected oligarchs, officials in Fiji confiscated Suleiman Kerimov’s $300 million yacht after the US demanded that he be imprisoned for sanctions violations and links to corruption.
– Farmers who are on the front lines –
Fighting raged on in eastern Ukraine.
At least 25 people were injured in a midnight Russian strike on Kramatorsk, according to Donbas regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko.
In other news, the Ukrainian army announced the recapture of “many communities on the border of Mykolaiv and Kherson districts.”
Farmers hurrying to meet the spring planting season in the southwest have discovered unexploded munitions – another another source of concern for next year’s harvest in Europe’s breadbasket.
“We have been locating and eliminating explosive weaponry every day since the beginning of the conflict,” Dmytro Polishchuk, one of the deminers, told AFP before venturing into a field in the southern town of Grygorivka to detonate an unexploded rocket.
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