Ukraine denies Putin’s claim of Mariupol ‘win’
RUSSIA’S President Vladimir Putin yesterday claimed victory in the strategic Ukrainian city of Mariupol, even as he ordered his troops not to risk more losses by storming the last pocket of resistance in the war’s iconic battleground.
Russian troops have besieged the port city in the south of Ukraine since the early days of the conflict and largely reduced it to ruins. Top officials have repeatedly claimed it was about to fall, but Ukrainian forces have stubbornly held on in the face of overwhelming odds.
In recent weeks, troops have held the sprawling Azovstal steelworks, as Russian forces pounded the industrial site and repeatedly issued ultimatums ordering their surrender.
Yesterday, as he has done before, Mr Putin seemed to shift the narrative and declared victory without taking the plant.
“The completion of combat work to liberate Mariupol is a success,” he said in a joint appearance yesterday with Russia’s defence minister. “Congratulations.”
Ukraine has denied that a Russian victory in Mariupol has been achieved. “They cannot physically capture Azovstal. They have understood this. They suffered huge losses there,” said Oleksiy Arestovich, an adviser to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky.
By painting the mission as a success even without a head-on storming of the plant, Mr Putin may be seeking to take the focus off the site, which has become a global symbol of defiance. Even without the steelworks, the Russians appear to have control of the rest of the city and its vital port, though that facility seems to have suffered extensive damage.
The Russian leader said that, for now, he would not risk sending troops into the warren of tunnels under the giant Azovstal plant, instead preferring to isolate the hold-outs “so that not even a fly comes through”.
Defence minister Sergei Shoigu said the plant was blocked off, while giving yet another prediction that the site could be taken in days.
Mr Shoigu said about 2,000 Ukrainian troops remained in the site, which has 15 miles of tunnels and bunkers that spread out across about four square miles.
Ukrainian officials said that about 1,000 civilians are also trapped there along with 500 wounded soldiers, and demanded their release.
If Mariupol does fall, it would represent Russia’s biggest victory of the war in Ukraine yet, and the scale of suffering in the city on the Azov Sea has made it a worldwide focal point.
Its definitive capture would also complete a land bridge between Russia and the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow seized from Ukraine in 2014, and allow Mr Putin’s forces to shift their attention to the larger battle for Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland, the Donbas.
For weeks, Russian officials have declared that capturing the Donbas is the war’s main goal. Moscow’s forces opened a new phase of the war this week – a drive along a front from the north-eastern city of Kharkiv to the Azov Sea – to do just that.
With global tensions running high, Russia reported the first successful test launch of a new type of intercontinental ballistic missile, the Sarmat, on Wednesday.
Mr Putin boasted that it can overcome any missile defence system and make those who threaten Russia “think twice”.