Russia presses assault as Putin marks V-Day
Invaders seizing ‘documents from the locals,’ alleges Kyiv
Zaporizhzhia, May 9: Russian forces pushed forward on Monday in their assault on Ukraine, seeking to capture the crucial southern port city of Mariupol as Moscow celebrated its Victory Day holiday. Determined to show success in a war now in its
11th week, Russian troops pummeled a seaside steel mill where an estimated
2,000 Ukrainian fighters are making their last stand in the port city of Mariupol.
The mill is the only part of the city not overtaken by the invaders. Its defeat would deprive Ukraine of a vital port and allow Russia to establish a land corridor to the Crimean Peninsula, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014.
The Ukrainian military’s General Staff warned of a high probability of missile strikes and said that Russian troops were seizing “personal documents from the local population without good reason" in Russian-controlled areas of Zaporizhzhia — the city where many fleeing Mariupol have gathered. The military alleged Russian troops were seizing documents to force residents to join in Victory Day commemorations.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned the anniversary, which marks the Soviet Union’s triumph over Nazi Germany in 1945, could bring a renewed onslaught. “They have nothing to celebrate,” Linda Thomas-Greenfield, US ambassador to the United Nations, said of the Russians.
“They have not succeeded in defeating the Ukrainians. They have not succeeded in dividing the
world or dividing Nato. And they have only succeeded in isolating themselves internationally and becoming a pariah state around the globe.”
Speaking on Monday at a military parade marking the holiday, Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to justify his invasion, by claiming that it was necessary to ward off what he described “an absolutely unacceptable threat just next to our borders.”