Donbas attack not going to plan
Ukrainian forces fought to hold off Russian attempts to advance in the south and east, where the Kremlin is seeking to capture the country’s industrial Donbas region, and a senior United States defence official says Moscow’s offensive is going much slower than planned.
While artillery fire, sirens and explosions were heard in some cities, the United Nations sought to broker an evacuation of civilians from the increasingly hellish ruins of the bombed-out city of Mariupol, where the mayor said the situation inside the steel plant that has become the southern port city’s last stronghold is dire.
Citizens are ‘‘begging to get saved’’, Mayor Vadym Boichenko said. ‘‘There, it’s not a matter of days. It’s a matter of hours.’’
Getting a full picture of the unfolding battle in the east has been difficult because airstrikes and artillery barrages have made it extremely dangerous for reporters to move around. Both Ukraine and the Moscow-backed rebels fighting in the east also have introduced tight restrictions on reporting from the combat zone.
But, so far, Russia’s troops and the separatist forces appear to have made only minor gains.
In part because of the strength of Ukrainian resistance, the US believes the Russians are ‘‘at least several days behind where they wanted to be’’ as they try to encircle Ukrainian troops in the east, said the senior US defence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the American military’s assessment.
In Mariupol, about 100,000 people were believed trapped with little food, water or medicine. An estimated 2000 Ukrainian defenders and 1000 civilians were holed up at the Azovstal steel plant.
‘‘Locals who manage to leave Mariupol say it is hell, but when they leave this fortress, they say it is worse,’’ the mayor said.
UN spokesman Farhan Haq said the organisation was negotiating with authorities in Moscow and Kyiv to create safe passage.
Ukraine has blamed the
failure of numerous previous evacuation attempts on continued Russian shelling.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya TV that the real problem is that ‘‘humanitarian corridors are being ignored by Ukrainian ultra-nationals’’. Moscow has repeatedly claimed right-wing Ukrainians are thwarting evacuation efforts and using civilians as human shields.
Fighting could be heard from Kramatorsk to Sloviansk, two cities about 18 kilometres apart in the Donbas. Columns of smoke
rose from the Sloviansk area and neighbouring cities. At least one person was reported wounded in the shelling.
In his nightly video address, Zelenskyy accused Russia of trying to destroy the Donbas and all who live there.
The constant attacks ‘‘show that Russia wants to empty this territory of all people’’, he said.
‘‘If the Russian invaders are able to realise their plans even partly, then they have enough artillery and aircraft to turn the entire Donbas into stones, as they did with Mariupol.’’
Vast quantities of weapons for Ukrainian forces continued to arrive in Eastern Europe.
End-of-the-week transfers include more American artillery, radar systems and armed drones, as well as mines, rockets and small-arms ammunition from other countries.
At the Pentagon, spokesperson John Kirby said that the US military had begun training Ukrainian troops on the newly arriving weaponry, including howitzer 155 mm artillery and counter-artillery radar.
The bulk of the training, Kirby said, would be carried out by members of the Florida national guard, which had training forces in Ukraine until just before Russia’s February invasion.
New commitments, and reaffirmations of existing ones, were made by a number of nations attending a US-sponsored conference in Germany of more than 40 countries supporting Ukraine. One goal of the conference was to synchronise the donations and their delivery, and to meet Ukraine’s immediate needs.
Canada, among those who attended, is also supplying howitzers, as well as precision cameras for Turkish-made armed drones and other equipment, Anita Anand, Canada’s defence minister, said.
‘‘We need to keep supplying military aid regardless of the changing strategy of the Russians,’’ she said.
Kirby, in a briefing for reporters yesterday, used some of his strongest language yet to describe Russian President Vladimir Putin, accusing him of ‘‘depravity’’ in emotional comments. –