Russian troops ‘storming Mariupol steel plant with hundreds still inside’
UKRAINE claimed today that Russian forces had begun storming a steel plant in the besieged city of Mariupol even as hundreds remain trapped inside.
With Russia targeting the Azovstal steel plant, military leaders stepped up calls to evacuate soldiers and civilians from the vast complex which has become a symbol of Ukrainian resistance during the conflict.
“We’ll do everything that’s possible to repel the assault, but we’re calling for urgent measures to evacuate the civilians that remain inside the plant and to bring them out safely,” Sviatoslav Palamar, deputy commander of Ukraine’s Azov Regiment, said in an online post. He added that throughout the night the plant was hit with naval artillery fire and airstrikes.
Although more than 100 people were evacuated from the Azovstal plant to the nearby city of Zaporizhzhia over the last few days, Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky accued the Kremlin of violating evacuation agreements. “Currently, Russian troops are not adhering to the agreements,” Mr Zelensky said.
“They continue massive strikes at Azovstal. They are trying to storm the complex.” It is unclear how many Ukrainian fighters are still inside, but Russia has said it is around 2,000. A few hundred civilians also remained there, Ukrainian deputy prime minister Iryna Vereshchuk said.
More civilians were leaving Mariupol today, the regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said, although it was not clear if any of those being evacuated were from the Azovstal plant.
Meanwhile the governor of the eastern Donetsk region said Russian attacks left 21 dead yesterday, the highest number of known fatalities since April 8, when a missile attack on the railway station in Kramatorsk killed at least 59 people.
Russia also struck a military airfield near Ukraine’s south-western city of Odesa with missiles, destroying drones, missiles and ammunition supplied to Ukraine by the US and European allies, the defence ministry in Moscow said.
Explosions were also heard in Lviv, in western Ukraine, near the Polish border. The strikes damaged three power substations, knocking out electricity in parts of the city and disrupting the water supply, and wounded two people, local leaders claimed.
But British defence chiefs said Vladimir Putin’s forces are “struggling to break through” Ukrainian defences despite deploying thousands of troops for an advance in part of the Donbas region.
In its latest intelligence briefing this morning, the Ministry of Defence said: “Russia has deployed 22 battalion tactical groups near Izyum in its attempt to advance along the northern axis of the Donbas.
“Despite struggling to break through Ukrainian defences and build momentum, Russia highly likely intends to proceed beyond Izyum to capture the cities of Kramatorsk and Severodonetsk.
“Capturing these locations would consolidate Russian military control of the north-eastern Donbas and provide a staging point for their efforts to cut-off Ukrainian forces in the region.”