Ukrainians in Mariupol steel plant vow to fight to the end
Ukrainian soldiers facing relentless Russian bombardment in the south-eastern city of Mariupol have vowed to fight until the end as Moscow seeks to mark its Victory Day by defeating the fighters.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is due to preside over a military parade in Moscow’s Red Square today.
He is expected to make a speech that could offer clues about the future direction of a war marked by high civilian casualties and ramifications felt globally.
The current focus of the conflict is on Mariupol, where the deputy commander of the Azov regiment, which is holed up in a steel plant in Mariupol, called on the international community to help evacuate wounded soldiers.
“We will continue to fight as long as we are alive to repel the Russian occupiers,” Capt Sviatoslav Palamar said.
The G7 group of nations, meanwhile, have announced a five-point programme to maintain pressure on Moscow, including further financial sanctions and phasing out imports of Russian energy.
“The G7 and Ukraine stand united in this difficult time
and in their quest to ensure Ukraine’s democratic, prosperous future,” the G7 said.
About 60 more people were feared dead after Russian forces bombed a school in Bilohorivka, a village in the eastern region Luhansk.
About 90 people were sheltering inside the building on Saturday when it was hit by a bomb that set it alight for four hours.
“Thirty people were evacuated from the rubble, seven of whom were injured. Sixty people were likely to have died,” the Governor of Luhansk Serhiy Gaidai said on Telegram.
The G7 leaders spoke to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy by video to condemn the attack.
Intensified efforts to overwhelm the Ukrainian soldiers came as Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin said on Telegram thathehadtravelledtoMariupol.
Mr Khusnullin is the most senior Russian figure to visit the city after weeks of dogged resistance by Ukrainian forces inside the Azovstal steel plant.
About 2,000 fighters have made a last stand there, the only part of the city not under Russian control.
Mariupol is vital to Moscow’s efforts to link the Crimean Peninsula, which was annexed by Russia in 2014, and parts of the eastern regions of Luhansk and Donetsk that have been controlled by Russia-backed separatists since then.
Lt Ilya Samoilenko, a member of the Azov Regiment in the plant, said the situation was dire because there was no life-saving equipment in the tunnels.
He said that when some bunkers collapsed under the Russian shelling, fighters had to dig people out by hand.
“The truth is we are unique because no one expected we would last so long,” he said.
“Surrender, for us, is unacceptable because we cannot grant such a gift to the enemy.”
In a week-long operation brokered by the UN and the International Committee of the Red Cross, dozens of civilians who had taken refuge in the plant’s underground shelters were rescued.
The Ukrainian troops rejected deadlines given by Russia, which said the fighters could leave with their lives if they laid down their arms.
Mr Zelenskyy said on Saturday that more than 300 civilians had been rescued and that authorities would focus on trying to free medical workers and the injured.
In the Ukrainian-controlled city of Zaporizhzhia, about 200 kilometres north-west of Mariupol, dozens of people who fled the port city and nearby occupied areas waited to be registered in a car park set up
to welcome evacuees. “There’s lots of people still in Mariupol who want to leave but can’t,” said Viktoria Andreyeva, 46, a history teacher.
In an emotional address yesterday for Victory Day, when Europe commemorates the formal surrender of Germany to the Allies in the Second World War, Mr Zelenskyy said
evil had returned to Ukraine with the Russian invasion, but that his country would prevail.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made an unannounced visit to the town of Irpin yesterday as part of the co-ordinated show of support by Kyiv’s allies.
“The prime minister is in Ukraine to meet with President Zelenskyy and reaffirm Canada’s unwavering support for the Ukrainian people,” Mr Trudeau’s office said.
Mr Putin sent Victory Day messages to separatist leaders in Luhansk and Donetsk, saying Russia was fighting shoulder to shoulder with them and likening their joint efforts to the war against Nazi Germany.
He launched what he said was a “special military operation” on February 24 to disarm Ukraine and rid it of what he said was anti-Russian nationalism fomented by the West.
Ukraine and its allies say Russia launched an unprovoked invasion and accused its forces of deliberately killing civilians.
“They [the Russians] have nothing to celebrate tomorrow,” the US ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, told CNN.
“They have not succeeded in defeating the Ukrainians. They have not succeeded in dividing the world or dividing Nato.”
About 60 more people were feared dead after Russian forces bombed a school in Bilohorivka, a village in Luhansk