ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine (AP) — Russia has attacked the vital port of Odessa in southern Ukraine, Ukrainian officials said Tuesday, announcing that the bodies of 44 civilians were found in the rubble of a building in the northeast that was destroyed weeks ago.
Meanwhile, a Ukrainian official said at least 100 civilians remain trapped in a steel factory in the besieged city of Mariupol, where Ukrainian fighters are making a last stand.
The 44 bodies were found in a five-story building that collapsed in March in Izyum, about 120 kilometers (75 miles) from the city of Kharkiv, which has been under sustained Russian attack from the beginning of the war at the end of February.
“This is another horrible war crime by the Russian occupiers against the civilian population!” Oleh Synehubov, head of the regional administration, said in a social media post announcing the deaths.
Izyum lies on a key route to the eastern industrial region of Donbas, now the focus of Russia’s war in Ukraine. Synehubov did not say specifically where the building was.
Earlier, the Ukrainian military said that Russian forces fired seven missiles the previous day from the air in the crucial Odessa Black Sea Port, hitting a shopping mall and a warehouse. One person was killed and five were injured, the army said.
Ukraine alleged that at least some of the ammunition used dated back to the Soviet era, making it unreliable for targeting. Ukrainian, British and American officials warn that Russia is rapidly depleting its stock of precision weapons and may not be able to build faster, raising the risk of more inaccurate rockets being used. As the conflict progresses. That could result in greater damage and more civilian deaths.
But the Center for Defense Strategies, a Ukrainian think tank that follows the war, said Moscow used some precision weapons against Odessa: Kinzhal, or “Dagger,” hypersonic air-to-surface missiles.
The use of advanced guided missiles allows Russia to fire from a distance without being exposed to possible anti-aircraft fire.
The attacks came on the same day that Russian President Vladimir Putin marked his country’s most important patriotic holiday. without being able to boast of great new successes on the battlefield. On Monday, he saw troops march in formation and military equipment pass by in a Victory Day parade in Moscow’s Red Square to celebrate the Soviet Union’s role in defeating Nazi Germany in 1945.
Many Western analysts expected Putin to use the Victory Day holiday to herald some kind of victory in Ukraine or announce an escalation, but he did not. Instead, he tried to justify the war again as a necessary response to what he described as a hostile Ukraine.
Putin has long bristled at NATO’s push east toward the former Soviet republics. Ukraine and its Western allies have denied the country poses a threat.
“The danger was increasing day by day,” Putin said. “Russia has given a preventive response to aggression. It was a forced, timely decision and the only correct one.”
There was also heavy fighting in eastern Ukraine, including at a steel plant in Mariupolwhere Russian forces tried to take the last pocket of Ukrainian resistance.
One of the Ukrainian fighters who held out at the steel plant said they were still defending the city. Valeri Paditel, who heads the border guards in the Donetsk region, said the fighters were “doing everything to make those who defend the city proud in the future.”
Hundreds of civilians hiding for weeks with the fighters have been evacuated in recent days. But Petro Andryushchenko, adviser to the mayor of Mariupol, said in a social media post on Tuesday that “in addition to the military, at least 100 civilians remain” at the sprawling plant, which has miles of underground tunnels. At one point, Ukrainian and Russian authorities said all the civilians had left the plant.
Andryushchenko said Russian forces continue to attack the plant with heavy weapons and “attempts to storm (the plant) from the ground remain unsuccessful.”
The Ukrainian military warned on Tuesday that Russia could attack the country’s chemical industries. The claim was not immediately explained in the report. But Russian bombing has previously targeted oil depots and other industrial sites during the war.
Additionally, satellite images analyzed by The Associated Press showed two ships off Ukraine’s Snake Island on Monday afternoon.
One of the ships seen in the Planet Labs PBC images appeared to be a landing craft. Ukraine has repeatedly attacked Russian positions there recently, suggesting that Russian forces may be trying to re-staff or withdraw personnel from the Black Sea island.
After unexpectedly fierce resistance forced the Kremlin to abandon their effort to storm kyiv in the first days of the warMoscow forces have concentrated on capturing the Donbas.
But the fight there has been back and forth, town by town. Some analysts have suggested that Putin could declare the fighting a war, not just a “special military operation,” and order a national mobilization, with a call up of reserves, to fight a protracted conflict.
In the end, he gave no sign of where the war is headed or how he might try to save it. Specifically, she left unanswered the question of whether or how Russia will muster more forces for a continued war.
“Without concrete steps to build a new force, Russia cannot fight a long war, and the clock is ticking on the failure of its military in Ukraine,” tweeted Phillips P. O’Brien, a professor of strategic studies at the University of Saint Andrew in Scotland.
Nigel Gould Davies, the former British ambassador to Belarus, said: “Russia has not won this war. She is starting to lose it.”
He said that unless Russia makes a breakthrough, “the balance of advantages will steadily shift in favor of Ukraine, especially as Ukraine gains access to increasing volumes of increasingly sophisticated Western military equipment.”
As Putin laid a wreath in Moscow, anti-aircraft sirens resounded again in the Ukrainian capital. But Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy declared in his own Victory Day speech that his country would eventually defeat the Russians.
“Very soon there will be two Victory Days in Ukraine,” he said in a video. And he added: “We are fighting for freedom, for our children, and that is why we will win.”
A Zelenskyy adviser interpreted Putin’s speech as an indication that Russia has no interest in escalating the war through the use of nuclear weapons or direct engagement with NATO.
In Washington, President Joe Biden signed a bipartisan measure to restart the World War II-era “lend-lease” program, which helped defeat Nazi Germany, to bolster kyiv and Eastern European allies.
Russia has about 97 battalion tactical groups in Ukraine, mainly in the east and south, a slight increase from last week, according to a senior US official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the Pentagon’s assessment. Each unit has about 1,000 soldiers, according to the Pentagon.
The official said that overall the Russian effort in Donbas has not made any significant progress in recent days and continues to face strong resistance from Ukrainian forces.
Satellite photos on Monday showed intense fires in Russian-controlled territory in southern Ukraine. The cause of the fires was not immediately clear. However, Planet Labs images showed thick smoke rising to the east of Vasylivka, a town flanked by nature reserves.
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Gambrell reported from Lviv, Ukraine. Yesica Fisch in Bakhmut, David Keyton in Kyiv, Yuras Karmanau in Lviv, Mstyslav Chernov in Kharkiv, Lolita C. Baldor in Washington, and AP staff around the world contributed to this report.
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