Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu told Putin on Thursday that the sprawling Azovstal steel plant where Ukrainian forces were holed up was “securely blocked.” He said the rest of the city was “liberated” and Putin hailed that as a “success.”
Leaving the plant in Ukrainian hands, however, robs the Russians of the ability to declare complete victory in Mariupol. The city’s capture has both strategic and symbolic importance.
“The West stands together to support the Ukrainian people,” Frederiksen, the Danish prime minister, said in a statement. As fears grew for the fate of civilians in Mariupol, the Kyiv regional police said Thursday that two mass graves with nine bodies were discovered in the city of Borodyanka, northwest of the capital. The findings added to thousands of civilians reported killed by Russian forces, who have been accused of wholesale abuses of Ukrainians.
. President Vladimir Putin boasted that it can overcome any missile defense system and make those who threaten Russia “think twice.” The head of the Russian state aerospace agency called the launch out of northern Russia “a present to NATO.”On the battlefield, Ukraine said Moscow continued to mount assaults across the east, probing for weak points in Ukrainian defensive lines.
The Luhansk governor said Russian forces control 80% of his region, which is one of two that make up the Donbas. Before Russia invaded on Feb. 24, the Kyiv government controlled 60% of the Luhansk region. Russia said it presented Ukraine with a draft document outlining its demands for ending the conflict — days after Putin said the talks were at a “dead end.”
In devastated Mariupol, Ukraine said the Russians dropped heavy bombs to flatten what was left of the sprawling Azovstal steel plant,A few thousand Ukrainian troops, by the Russians’ estimate, remained in the plant and its labyrinth of tunnels and bunkers spread out across about 11 square kilometers . Zelenskyy said about 1,000 civilians were also trapped.
More than 100,000 people overall were believed trapped in Mariupol with little if any food, water, medicine or heat. The city’s pre-war population was 400,000. In one neighborhood, they sought safety in a school basement — using desks, tables and chairs to fashion beds. More than 300 people slept there during the first days of the war, but most have left for safer places, and only a few dozen remain.
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