Evacuees shifted from mill amid fresh Russian assault
Ukraine’s military flatens Russian positions on a Black Sea island that was captured in the war’s first days and has become a symbol of Ukrainian resistance; Jill Biden hails ‘amazingly strong’ refugees
All women, children and elderly civilians have been evacuated from the Azovstal steel mill in Mariupol, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister said on Saturday, despite what military officers said was an ongoing Russian assault at the plant.
“This part of the Mariupol humanitarian operation is over,” Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
Russian forces backed by tanks and artillery tried again on saturday to storm azov st al, ukraine’ s military command said, part of a ferocious assault to dislodge the last Ukrainian defenders in the strategic port city on the Azov Sea.
Mariupol has been let in ruins by weeks of Russian bombardment and the steel mill has been largely destroyed. Several groups of civilians have let the sprawling complex over the past week during pauses in fighting.
Earlier on Saturday, Russia’s Interfax news agency cited Moscow-backed separatists in Ukraine’s Donetsk region as saying that 50 more people had been evacuated from the besieged steelworks.
However, journalists had not seen any sign of their arrival at a reception centre in separatist controlled territory near Mariupol.
The separatists said a total of 176 civilians had now been evacuated from the plant.
Evacuations of civilians from the Azovstal plant - brokered by the United Nations and the International Commitee of the Red Cross (ICRC) - began last weekend. But they were halted during the week by renewed fighting.
The city’s mayor estimated earlier this week that 200 civilians were trapped at the plant.
It was not clear ater the deputy prime minister’s statement on Saturday if civilian men were still in the complex.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a latenight video address on Friday that Ukraine was also working on a diplomatic effort to save fighters barricaded inside the steel works. It was unclear how many fighters remained there.
The fighters have vowed not to surrender. Ukrainian officials fear Russian forces want to wipe them out by Monday, in time for Moscow’s commemorations of the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two.
President Vladimir Putin declared victory in Mariupol on April 21, ordered the plant sealed off and called for Ukrainian forces inside to disarm. But Russia later resumed its assault on the plant.
Asked about plans for Russia to mark Monday’s anniversary in parts of Ukraine it holds, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Friday “The time will come to mark Victory Day in Mariupol.”
Russian forces also shelled setlements in the northeast, near Ukraine’s second-largest city Kharkiv.
The atacks blew up three road bridges in order to slow down counter-offensive actions by the Ukrainian forces, the general staff said.
Russia’s defence ministry said it destroyed a large stockpile of military equipment from the United States and European countries near the Bohodukhiv railway station in the Kharkiv region.
Russian forces had hit 18 Ukrainian military facilities overnight, including three ammunition depots in Dachne, near the southern port city of Odesa, the ministry said.
Ukraine forces on Saturday released footage they said showed drone strikes on a Russian landing crat vessel and a building that housed missiles on Zmiinyi (Snake) Island, a speck of land south of Odesa. It did not say when the strike happened.
Russia’s lower house of parliament speaker Vyacheslav Volodin on Saturday accused Washington of coordinating military operations in Ukraine, which he said amounted to direct US involvement in military action against Russia.
Meanwhile, the US First Lady Jill Biden hailed the “amazingly strong” refugees from war-torn Ukraine as she visited neighbouring Romania on Saturday.
“You are amazingly strong,” Biden said ater listening to mothers and children recount how they fled Russia’s invasion of their country.
“We stand with you, I hope you know that,” she said in a visit to a school in Bucharest, accompanied by her Romanian counterpart Carmen Iohannis, according to images transmited by TVR public television.
On Sunday she is set to travel to Slovakia, where she will meet with refugees, aid workers and local residents in the city of Kosice and the village of Vysne Nemecke.
The time will come to mark Victory Day in Mariupol: Moscow; Russia accuses US of co-ordinating Kyiv military operations, claims destroying equipment supplied; Jill Biden and Carmen Johannis meet Ukrainian refugees.
The war in Ukraine wracked the country’s southern coast on Saturday as Russian forces fired cruise missiles at the city of Odesa and bombarded a steel mill housing Ukrainian civilians and fighters, hoping to complete their conquest of the port of Mariupol in time for Victory Day celebrations.
However, in a sign of the unexpectedly effective defence that has sustained the fighting into its 11th week, Ukraine’s military flatened Russian positions on a Black Sea island that was captured in the war’s first days and has become a symbol of Ukrainian resistance.
Western military analysts said a Ukrainian counter-offensive also was advancing around the nation’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, even as it remained a key target of Russian shelling. The Ukrainian army said it retook control of five villages and part of a sixth near hotly contested Kharkiv.
As Russia’s Monday holiday commemorating Nazi Germany’s defeat in World War II approached, cities across Ukraine prepared for an expected increase in Russian atacks. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged residents numbed by more than 10 weeks of war to heed air raid warnings.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Saturday that Zelensky and his people “embody the spirit of those who prevalied during the Second World War.” He accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of trying “to twist history to atempt to justify his unprovoked and brutal war against Ukraine.”
“As war again rages in Europe, we must increase our resolve to resist those who now seek to manipulate historical memory in order to advance their own ambitions,” Blinken said in a statement issued as the United States and United Kingdom marked the Allied victory in Europe 77 years ago.
Meanwhile, US First Lady Jill Biden hailed the “amazingly strong” refugees from war-torn Ukraine as she visited neighbouring Romania on Saturday.
“You are amazingly strong,” Jill Biden said ater listening to mothers and children recount how they fled Russia’s invasion of their country.
“We stand with you, I hope you know that,” she said in a visit to a school in Bucharest, accompanied by her Romanian counterpart Carmen Iohannis, according to images transmited by TVR public television.
More than 810,000 Ukrainians have entered Romania since the start of the war, according to UN figures released on April 29.
Most have moved on to other countries, with an estimated 80,000 staying, half of them children, according to the World Vision foundation.
Jill Biden’s visit to the region is the latest show of US support for Ukraine and the countries assisting it, and follows a trip to Kyiv by US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who met Zelensky a week ago.
Earlier, the Italian government ordered police to impound a luxury yacht worth some $700 million that has been linked in the media to Putin.
The sleek, six-deck Scheherazade had been undergoing repairs in the Italian port of Marina di Carrara since September, but recent activity at the dockside suggested that the crew might be preparing to put to sea.
A source with direct knowledge of a weeks-long investigation into the vessel said police believed the owner was Eduard Khudainatov, the former chief of Russian energy giant Rosneft who is not currently a target of EU sanctions.
In a statement announcing the seizure order, the finance ministry did not name the owner, saying only that he had ties to “prominent elements of the Russian government.”
The ministry said the owner himself was not on any sanctions lists drawn up by Brussels following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. However, it said Rome had asked Brussels to rectify this and had ordered the boat to be seized pending a decision.
Police boarded the yacht late on Friday to execute the order, the Italian government said.
In an address to the Italian parliament in March, Zelensky had urged the government to impound the yacht as part of a Europe-wide effort to pressure Putin and his associates to halt the assault on Ukraine.