Ukraine gets ready for east offensive
UKRAINIAN forces were preparing for new Russian attacks in the south-east region where Moscow’s guns were now trained after its assault on the capital Kyiv was repelled, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said yesterday.
Five weeks into an invasion that has blasted cities into wastelands and created more than 4 million refugees, US and European officials said Russian president Vladimir Putin was being misled by his generals about the dire performance of Russia’s military.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said it was bringing a convoy of aid to reach the besieged Black Sea port of Mariupol, where tens of thousands of people have been trapped for weeks under bombardment without food, water or heat.
In a video address, Zelenskiy said Russian troop movements away from Kyiv and the northern city of Chernihiv were “the consequence of our defenders’ work”. Ukraine was seeing “a build-up of Russian forces for new strikes on the Donbas and we are preparing for that”, he said, referring to the south-eastern region that Russia demands Ukraine cede to separatists, where Mariupol is the main port.
Tough resistance by Ukrainian forces has so far prevented Russia from capturing any major city, including Kyiv, which it assaulted with armoured columns from the north-west and east.
Moscow says it is now focusing on “liberating” Donbas.
Mariupol, once a city of 400 000 people, has been destroyed by four weeks of relentless bombardment and siege. The UN believes thousands of people have died there.
Previous attempts to bring aid into besieged parts of the city have failed and civilians have only been able to escape if they have cars. Ukraine said 45 buses were on their way yesterday, and the ICRC said it would evacuate civilians from today if the warring parties agreed on safe passage.
“It’s desperately important that this operation takes place. The lives of tens of thousands of people in Mariupol depend on it,” said ICRC spokesperson Ewan Watson in Geneva.
Russia says that the mission is going to plan. But US officials have declassified intelligence which they said showed a rift between Putin and his top advisers who were too afraid to warn him of the poor performance of his military, or the economic impact of Western sanctions.