Ukraine braces for escalated attacks
The war in Ukraine wracked the country’s southern coast Saturday as Russian forces fired cruise missiles at the city of Odesa and bombarded a steel mill housing Ukrainian civilians and fighters, hoping to complete their conquest of the port of Mariupol in time for Victory Day celebrations.
However, in a sign of the unexpectedly effective defense that has sustained the fighting into its 11th week, Ukraine’s military flattened Russian positions on a Black Sea island that was captured in the war’s first days and has become a symbol of Ukrainian resistance.
Western military analysts said a Ukrainian counter-offensive also was advancing around the nation’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, even as it remained a key target of Russian shelling.
The Ukrainian army said it retook control of five villages and part of a sixth near hotly contested Kharkiv.
As Russia’s Monday holiday commemorating Nazi Germany’s defeat in World War II approached, cities across Ukraine prepared for an expected increase in Russian attacks. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged residents numbed by more than 10 weeks of war to heed air raid warnings.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Saturday that Zelenskyy and his people “embody the spirit of those who prevailed during the Second World War.” He accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of trying “to twist history to attempt to justify his unprovoked and brutal war against Ukraine.”
“As war again rages in Europe, we must increase our resolve to resist those who now seek to manipulate historical memory in order to advance their own ambitions,” Blinken said in a statement issued as the United States and United Kingdom marked the Allied victory in Europe 77 years ago.
The most intense battles in recent days have befallen eastern Ukraine, where the two sides are entrenched in a fierce race to capture or reclaim territory.
Moscow’s offensive in eastern Ukraine has focused on claiming the industrial Donbas region, where Russia-backed separatists have been fighting since 2014 and occupy some areas.
Moscow also has sought to sweep across southern Ukraine to both cut off the country from the sea and to connect its territory to the breakaway Transnistria region of Moldova, long home to Russian troops. But it has struggled to achieve those objectives.