Russia renews strike on Mariupol, intensifies Luhansk operation
Russia resumed attacks on the last Ukrainian soldiers holed up in a giant steelworks in Mariupol, a Ukrainian official said on Saturday, days after Moscow declared victory in the southern port city and said its forces did not need to take the factory.
Russian forces were hitting the Azovstal complex with air strikes and trying to storm it, presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said, adding Russia “is trying to strangle the final resistance of Mariupol’s defenders”.
The biggest battle of the conflict has raged for weeks as Russia seeks to capture a city seen as crucial to its attempts to link the eastern Donbas region with Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula reunified with the country in 2014, Reuters reported.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said on Friday the remaining fighters had been “securely blockaded” at the steel plant. On Thursday, President Vladimir Putin had declared the city “liberated” and ordered Russian defence minister to block off the Azovstal complex “so not even a fly can get through” rather than try to storm it.
“There’s no need to climb into these catacombs and crawl underground through these industrial facilities,” Putin said on television.
Arestovych said Ukrainian troops in the Azovstal complex were still holding out “despite the very difficult situation” and were attempting counterattacks.
Russia has said the “special military operation” it launched on Feb. 24 is to demilitarise Ukraine and liberate its population from dangerous nationalists. Moscow has denied targeting civilians.
On Saturday Luhansk Governor Serhiy Gaidai said Ukrainian forces were pulling back from some settlements to new defensive lines to preserve their units in the face of an intensifying barrage on all cities in the region.
Russia’s current offensive is focused on the Donbas, where Moscow-backed forces have controlled parts of its Donetsk and Luhansk regions for years.
Russia said on Saturday it had shot down a Ukrainian fighter jet and destroyed three Ukrainian helicopters at an airfield in Kharkiv, a city northwest of Donbas.
On Friday, Russian general Rustam Minnekayev said Moscow wanted control not just of the Donbas but also over southern Ukraine, suggesting wider goals for the operation than Russia has previously acknowledged.
Minnekayev, deputy commander of Russia’s central military district, said full control over southern Ukraine would give it access to Transdniestria, a breakaway part of Moldova in the west.
That would cut off Ukraine’s entire coastline and mean Russian forces pushing hundreds of miles further west, past the major coastal city of Odesa.