Russia switches forces for the battle for the heart of Ukraine


kyiv, Ukraine (AP) — Russia and Ukraine are hurtling into what could be an epic battle for control of the country’s industrial heartland as Ukrainian officials say Moscow has moved a dozen military units from the shattered port of Mariupol to eastern Ukraine. .

Meanwhile, Russia reported on Friday that a soldier died and another 27 were missing following the fire aboard the Moskva warship, which sank a week ago after what the Ukrainians boasted was a missile attack. The Russian military previously reported that everyone on board had been rescued.

Also on Friday, new satellite images showed a second possible mass grave in a town near Mariupol, where Ukrainian defenders are holed up in a steel plant.

The Russian Defense Ministry did not acknowledge an attack on the warship. He went on to say that a fire broke out after munitions detonated, without explaining how it happened. The loss of guided missile cruiser – the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet – was a humiliating setback for Moscow.

in Mariupol, largely reduced to smoldering rubble by weeks of bombardmentRussian state television showed the flag of pro-Moscow Donetsk separatists raised on what it said was the highest point in the city, its television tower. He also showed what he said was the main building of the besieged Azovstal steel plant in the burning city.

The Kremlin has sent more than 100,000 soldiers and mercenaries from Syria and Libya to the fight in Ukraine and is deploying more forces to the country every day, said Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council.

“We have a difficult situation, but our army is defending our state,” he said.

Numerous cities and towns were bombed in Donbas, the industrial region in the east that the Kremlin has declared the new main theater of war, as well as in the Kharkiv region just to the west and south, officials said.

Russian forces hit the 2,000 Ukrainian fighters still holed up inside the Azovstal plant, the last known pocket of resistance in the strategic southern port city, the mayor’s office said.

“Every day they drop several bombs on Azovstal,” said Petro Andryushchenko, adviser to the mayor of Mariupol. “The fighting, the bombing, the bombing does not stop.”

In other developments, a senior Russian military official publicly outlined Russian war goals that appeared to be broader than what the Kremlin has declared in recent weeks. Rustam Minnekayev said Russian forces aim to take full control of southern Urkaine, as well as eastern Ukraine, and that doing so would open the way to the nation of Moldova, where Russia backs the breakaway region of Transnistria.

In response to Minnekayev’s statement about Russian forces opening a route to Moldova from southern Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned: “The Russian invasion of Ukraine was supposed to be just the beginning; Also, they want to take over other countries.”

Moldovan officials are watching Putin’s actions in Ukraine with caution, with Zelenskyy’s adviser Mykhailo Podolyak adding that Russia “was always lying to everyone and, in fact, from the very beginning, it stupidly wanted to steal part of Ukraine’s territory for secure a way out to Transnistria. ”

Latest satellite photos from Maxar Technologies revealed what appeared to be a site of the second mass grave near Mariupol. The site at a cemetery in the town of Vynohradne has several newly dug parallel trenches that are about 40 meters (131 feet) long, Maxar said in a statement.

A day earlier, Maxar posted photos of what appeared to be rows and rows of more than 200 freshly dug mass graves next to a cemetery in the town of Manhush, outside Mariupol. That prompted Ukrainian accusations that the Russians are trying to cover up the killing of civilians in the city.

“This again confirms that the occupants organize the collection, burial and cremation of dead residents in all districts of the city,” Andryushchenko said on the Telegram messaging app.

Ukrainians estimated that the graves seen in photos released Thursday could contain 9,000 bodies.

The Kremlin did not respond to satellite images.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has declared victory in the battle for Mariupol despite the reluctance of the steel mills. He ordered his forces not to storm the plant to finish off the defenders, but to seal it off in an apparent attempt to force their surrender.

Mariupol has acquired great importance in the war. Capturing it would deprive the Ukrainians of a vital port and complete a land corridor between Russia and the Crimean Peninsula, which Putin seized from Ukraine in 2014.

It would also allow Putin to throw more of his forces into the potentially climactic battle for Donbas and its coal mines, factories and other industries, or what the Kremlin has now declared to be its main objective.

Danilov reported that 12-14 of Russia’s elite military units had, in fact, left Mariupol and started moving east to take part in the fighting there.

“Now it will be difficult for our forces, because our guys in Mariupol were facing (those units) themselves. It is his bravery and his feat,” he said.

Danilov also said that kyiv managed to deliver weapons by helicopter at great risk under cover of night to the Mariupol steel mill, which has been bombed for weeks.

Putin said Russia gave Ukrainian forces inside the plant the option to surrender, with guarantees to keep them alive, and offered them “decent treatment and medical care,” according to an account of a phone call with the European Council president. , Charles Michel, provided by the Kremlin. .

“But the kyiv regime does not allow them to take advantage of this opportunity,” Putin accused.

More than 100,000 people, out of a population of about 430,000 before the war, are believed to be trapped in Mariupol with little food, water or heating, and more than 20,000 civilians have been killed in the nearly two-month siege, according to reports. Ukrainian authorities.

Most attempts to evacuate civilians from the city have failed due to what the Ukrainians said was continued Russian shelling.

Days after the Russian offensive to take the east, the campaign has yet to escalate into a full assault, and military analysts say Moscow’s forces are still building up and have made no major gains in the Donbas or gained significant ground. .

But shelling killed three civilians in a small town and two villages on Friday in the Donetsk region, which is part of Donbas, regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko posted on a messaging app. Kyrylenko said the Russians opened fire on at least 20 of the settlements in the region.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said talks between the two countries have “stalled” because Moscow has not received a response from kyiv to its latest proposals, details of which have not been released.

Putin’s chief negotiator in the talks, Vladimir Medinsky, said he had several long talks on Friday with the head of the Ukrainian delegation. He did not give details.

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Fisch reported from Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine. Associated Press writers Mstyslav Chernov and Felipe Dana in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Yuras Karmanau in Lviv, Inna Varenytsia in Kviv, and Robert Burns and Aamer Madhani in Washington contributed to this report, as did other AP staff around the world. .

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Follow AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

David Keyton and Yesica Fisch, The Associated Press






















Reference-www.sudbury.com

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