Russia marks WW II anniversary
RUSSIAN forces stormed the Azovstal steel plant in Ukraine’s strategic port of Mariupol yesterday and stepped up missile strikes elsewhere, Ukrainian officials said, as President Vladimir Putin oversaw a parade of military firepower in Moscow.
Putin marked the anniversary of the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany in World War II by telling his armed forces they were fighting for their country. But he did not say how much longer their assault on Ukraine, now in its 11th week, would last or how it would end.
Azovstal, a vast complex of building and underground tunnels, is the last holdout for Ukrainian troops in Mariupol, whose capture would link Russian-seized areas in southern and eastern Ukraine and cut Ukraine off from the Azov Sea.
Putin has already declared victory in Mariupol but control of the steel plant would be a symbolic achievement on the 75th day of a war that has cost many Russian lives and isolated its economy, but failed to capture any major city.
Putin had told his defence minister not to storm Azovstal to avoid loss of
Russian lives, but Ukraine’s defence ministry said yesterday that Russian forces backed by tanks and artillery were conducting “storming operations”. Moscow has denied previous Ukrainian allegations of storming the complex, where civilians have also been sheltering.
Ukrainian officials said heavy fighting was under way in the country’s east, while four high-precision Onyx missiles fired from the Russian-controlled Crimea peninsula had struck the Odesa area in south-western Ukraine. The governor of Mykolaiv, also in the south-west, said overnight strikes were very heavy.
Just before the troops and tanks paraded in Moscow’s Red Square, Russian satellite television menus were altered to show viewers in the Russian capital messages condemning the war in Ukraine.
“The TV and the authorities are lying. No to war,” screenshots showed before they disappeared.
Russian forces have devastated villages, towns and cities and driven nearly 6 million Ukrainians to flee since they invaded Ukraine.
In his address, Putin said Russia’s “special military operation” was a purely defensive and unavoidable measure against plans for a Natobacked invasion of lands he said were historically Russia’s, including Crimea.
“Russia preventively rebuffed the aggressor,” he said, offering no evidence for what he called open preparations to attack Crimea and Ukraine’s Donbas region.
Putin made no reference to the bloody battle for Mariupol, where one of the Ukrainian defenders holed up in the ruins of the Azovstal plant earlier pleaded with the international community to help evacuate wounded soldiers. Ukraine’s Deputy Defence Minister, Hanna Malyar, said Russian forces were now trying to advance in eastern Ukraine, where the situation was “difficult”, but had moved back from the city of Kharkiv, where a local official reported heavy Russian shelling.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy confirmed the deaths of dozens of people in the Russian bombing of a school in eastern Ukraine on Saturday. About 60 people were killed, he said. There was no response from Moscow, which says it does not target civilians.
Three more civilians were killed in Kharkiv and three in the Luhansk region, its governor Serhiy Gaidai said, warning civilians to stay off the streets.
Zelenskiy said his country would win against Russia and would not cede any territory.
Britain’s Defence Minister Ben Wallace said Putin and his generals were mirroring the fascism and tyranny of Nazi Germany and were hijacking the proud history of their forebears.
Moscow has come under sanctions since its invasion, with trade heavily affected and assets seized.
A German official said agreement by EU member states on new measures was close.
The EU’s foreign policy chief said the bloc should also consider using frozen Russian foreign exchange reserves to help pay for the cost of rebuilding Ukraine after the war.
The Ukrainian-controlled city of Zaporizhzhia, about 230km north-west of Mariupol, held an all-day curfew yesterday for fear of Russian shelling.
Dozens of people who fled Mariupol and nearby occupied areas had earlier waited to register as evacuees.