Putin’s main ally says Russia will capture Mariupol on Thursday

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A top ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russian forces will seize the last major resistance stronghold in the besieged city of Mariupol on Thursday after Ukraine proposed talks on evacuating troops and civilians there.

Mariupol would be the largest city taken by Russia since it invaded Ukraine eight weeks ago in an attack that took longer than some military analysts expected, saw more than five million people flee abroad and turned cities to rubble.

“Before lunchtime, or after lunch, Azovstal will be completely under the control of the forces of the Russian Federation,” Ramzan Kadyrov, head of the Russian republic of Chechnya, whose forces have been fighting, said of the steel plant. in Ukraine.

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Ukraine’s Defense Ministry was not immediately available for comment.

A few dozen civilians managed to leave the strategically important southeastern port on Wednesday in a small bus convoy, according to Reuters witnesses, escaping the fiercest battle of the war.

A Ukrainian navy commander, Serhiy Volny, said the fighters at the steel mill may not be able to hold out much longer. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said that some 1,000 civilians are sheltering there.

Ukraine is ready for a “special round of negotiations” without conditions “to save our guys, (far right) Azov (battalion), military, civilians, children, living and wounded,” negotiator Mykhailo Podolyak tweeted.

kyiv has proposed exchanging Russian prisoners of war for safe conduct for trapped civilians and soldiers. It was not known whether Russia had responded to the offer of special negotiations.

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The fighters remain holed up at the plant and have ignored a Russian ultimatum to surrender. Fewer civilians than expected left on Wednesday.

Ukraine said it had so far stopped an assault by thousands of Russian troops trying to advance in what Kyiv calls the Battle of Donbas, a new campaign to seize two eastern provinces that Moscow claims on behalf of separatists.

Russian forces attacked dozens of military installations in eastern Ukraine and shot down a Ukrainian Mi-8 helicopter near the village of Koroviy Yar, its Defense Ministry said.

Putin said a first test launch on Wednesday of Russia’s Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile, a long-awaited new addition to its nuclear arsenal, would “provide food for thought for those who, amid frenziedly aggressive rhetoric, seek to threaten our country”. .”

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Russia calls its raid a “special military operation” to demilitarize and “denazify” Ukraine. kyiv and its Western allies reject it as a false pretext for a war of choice.

G7 finance ministers at a meeting on Wednesday said Russia should no longer participate in international forums, including meetings of the G20, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank this week.

Senior officials from Britain, the United States and Canada walked out on Russia’s representatives at a Group of 20 meeting in Washington, exposing deep divisions in the bloc of major economies.

The West imposed unprecedented sanctions on Russia and Washington went further on Wednesday, imposing restrictions on dozens of people and entities, including a commercial bank.

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ROLLING CLOUDS OF SMOKE

Mariupol, once a prosperous coastal city of 400,000, is now a wasteland where corpses lie in the streets as Russia hits the Azovstal steel plant with bunker-busting bombs, the kyiv government said.

The deputy commander of the Azov Regiment in Mariupol, Svyatoslav Kalamar, said several bunkers below the plant still housed 80 to 100 civilians each.

Black smoke billowed from the plant Wednesday as evacuees queued to board buses.

Pensioner Tamara, 64, said that she was going to stay with her sister in Zaporizhzhia. She was leaving with her husband, daughter, son-in-law and grandson.

“It is a pleasure… to leave after this nightmare. We live in basements for 30 days,” she said through tears.

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Ukraine accused Russian forces of failing to observe a local ceasefire agreement long enough to allow large numbers of people to leave. Russia did not immediately respond to the accusation.

Moscow denies targeting civilians and has blamed Ukraine for the failure of previous attempts to organize humanitarian corridors out of Mariupol.

If Russia were to capture Mariupol, it would unite territory held by pro-Russian separatists in the east with the Crimea region that Moscow annexed in 2014.

Moscow was forced to withdraw from northern Ukraine after an assault on kyiv was repulsed last month, but has sent troops back for an eastern offensive that began this week.

Russia was focusing on moving towards the city of Sloviansk, but “so far they are not succeeding,” said Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych.

Meanwhile, peace negotiations have stalled.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said peace talks were likely to fail and that world leaders, including US President Joe Biden, agreed in a call this week that they would continue to supply Ukraine with weapons.

(Reporting by Reuters journalists; Writing by Costas Pitas and Stephen Coates; Editing by Grant McCool and Himani Sarkar)