Russia vowed to continue its bloody offensive in Ukraine as the war neared the end of its seventh week on Wednesday, as President Vladimir Putin insisted the campaign was going as planned despite a major pullout and significant losses.
Thwarted in their advance on the capital kyiv, Russian troops focused on the eastern Donbas region, where Ukraine said it was investigating a claim that a poisonous substance had been dropped on its troops. It was not clear what the substance might be, but Western officials warned that any use of chemical weapons by Russia would be a serious escalation of the already devastating war.
Russia invaded on February 24 with the aim, according to Western officials, of taking kyiv, overthrowing the government and installing a pro-Moscow regime. In the six weeks that followed, the ground advance stalled, with Russian forces potentially losing thousands of fighters and being accused of killing civilians and other atrocities.
Putin said Tuesday that Moscow “had no choice” and that the invasion was aimed at protecting people in parts of eastern Ukraine and “ensuring Russia’s own security.” He promised that “it will continue until its complete completion and the fulfillment of the tasks that have been set.”
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was expected to receive on Wednesday the presidents of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, his staunch European allies.
“We are visiting Ukraine to show strong support for the Ukrainian people, we will meet with dear friend President Zelensky,” Estonian President Alar Karis tweeted.
For now, Putin’s forces are preparing for a major offensive in Donbas, where Russian-allied separatists and Ukrainian forces have been fighting since 2014, and where Russia has recognized the separatists’ claims to independence. Military strategists say Moscow believes local support, logistics and terrain in the region favor its larger and better-armed military, which could allow Russia to finally turn the tide in its favor.
In Mariupol, a strategic port city in Donbas, a Ukrainian regiment defending a steel plant alleged that a drone dropped a poisonous substance on the city. The claim by the Azov Regiment, a far-right group now part of the Ukrainian military, could not be independently verified. The regiment indicated that there were no serious injuries.
Zelensky said that while experts try to determine what the substance might be, “the world must react now.”
The claims came after a Russian-allied separatist official appeared to urge the use of chemical weapons, telling Russian state television on Monday that separatist forces should seize the plant by blocking all exits first. “And then we will use chemical troops to smoke them out of there,” said the official, Eduard Basurin. He denied on Tuesday that separatist forces had used chemical weapons in Mariupol.
He claims that Russia used a poisonous substance
Ukraine’s Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said officials were investigating and it was possible that phosphorus munitions, which cause horrendous burns but are not classified as chemical weapons, had been used in Mariupol, which has been hit for weeks of Russian attacks.
Western leaders have warned that if chemical weapons are found to have been used, it would amount to a serious violation of international law.
President Joe Biden first referred to Russia’s invasion as “genocide,” saying “Putin is just trying to eliminate the idea of being Ukrainian.”
The Pentagon said it could not confirm the drone report, but reiterated US concerns about Russia’s use of chemical agents. Meanwhile, Britain has warned that Russia may resort to phosphorous bombs, which are banned in civilian areas under international law, in Mariupol.
Most armies use phosphorous ammunition to illuminate targets or produce smoke screens. Deliberately firing them into an enclosed space to expose people to the fumes could violate the Chemical Weapons Convention, said Marc-Michael Blum, a former head of a laboratory for the Netherlands-based Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.
More aid will come from the US.
“Once you start using the properties of white phosphorus, the toxic properties, specifically and deliberately, then it’s banned,” he said.
In Washington, a senior US defense official said the Biden administration was preparing another military aid package for Ukraine to be announced in the coming days, possibly totaling $750 million. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss plans that have not yet been announced publicly. The US$800 million in military assistance approved by Biden a month ago is scheduled to be completed this week.
North of kyiv is the Hostomel airfield, a key target for Russian forces that would have allowed them to supply resources to bring down the Ukrainian capital. But Ukrainian soldiers mounted fierce resistance and shelled the runway to prevent Russian troops from landing. 2:53
Faced with strong resistance from Ukrainian forces reinforced by Western weapons, Russian forces have increasingly relied on bombing cities, leveling many urban areas and killing thousands. The war has driven more than 10 million Ukrainians from their homes, including nearly two-thirds of the country’s children.
Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said humanitarian corridors used to get people out of cities under Russian attack will not operate on Wednesday due to lack of security.
She said that in the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region, Russian troops blocked evacuation buses and in the Luhansk region, they were violating the ceasefire. “The occupiers not only ignore the norms of international humanitarian law, they are also unable to adequately control their people on the ground. All this generates such a level of danger on the routes that today we are forced to refrain from opening humanitarian corridors.”
Moscow’s withdrawal from cities and towns around kyiv led to the discovery of large numbers of apparently massacred civilians, prompting widespread condemnation and accusations of war crimes.
More than 720 people were killed in the kyiv suburbs that had been occupied by Russian troops and more than 200 were reported missing, the Interior Ministry said Wednesday morning.
In Bucha alone, Mayor Anatoliy Fedoruk said 403 bodies had been found and the death toll could rise as minesweepers comb the area.
In the Chernihiv region, villagers said more than 300 people were trapped for nearly a month by Russian occupation troops in the basement of a school and were only allowed to go to the bathroom or cook over open fires.
Valentyna Saroyan told The Associated Press that she saw at least five people die in Yahidne, 140 kilometers north of kyiv. In one of the rooms, residents wrote down the names of those who perished during the ordeal – the list numbered 18 people.
The villagers say they do not know the cause of the deaths. The Russian soldiers allowed them to remove the bodies from time to time to bury them in a mass grave in the local cemetery.
Julia Surypak said that the Russians only allowed some people to take a short trip home if they sang the Russian anthem. Another resident, Svitlana Baguta, said a Russian soldier made her drink from a flask and pointed a gun at her face.
Ukraine’s prosecutor general’s office said Tuesday that it was also investigating the events in the Brovary district, which lies to the northeast. He said the bodies of six civilians were found with gunshot wounds in a cellar in the village of Shevchenkove and Russian forces are believed to be responsible.
Prosecutors are also investigating allegations that Russian forces fired on a convoy of civilians trying to drive out of the Peremoha village in Brovary district, killing four people, including a 13-year-old boy. In another attack near Bucha, five people were killed, including two children, when a car was shot at, prosecutors said.
Putin falsely claimed Tuesday that Ukraine’s allegation that Russian troops killed hundreds of civilians in the city of Bucha was “false.” Associated Press reporters saw dozens of bodies in and around the city, some of whom had their hands tied and appeared to have been shot at close range.
Reference-www.cbc.ca