Russians attempt to storm Mariupol steel plant, missiles hit Odessa, killing six

Russian forces in Ukraine attempted to storm a steel plant housing soldiers and civilians in the southern city of Mariupol on Saturday in a bid to crush the last corner of resistance in a place of deep symbolic and strategic value to Moscow, Ukrainian officials said. .

The reported assault on the eve of Orthodox Easter came after the Kremlin claimed its army had taken the entire shattered city except for the Azovstal plant, and as Russian forces attacked other cities and towns in the south and east. from Ukraine.

A 3-month-old baby was among six people killed when Russia fired cruise missiles at the Black Sea port city of Odessa, authorities said.

Meanwhile, President Volodymyr Zelensky said he would meet US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in kyiv on Sunday. He announced the visit at a news conference and did not immediately share further details. The White House declined to comment.

Zelensky also lamented the infant’s death in Odessa. “The war started when this baby was one month old. Can you imagine what is happening? he said.

The fate of the Ukrainians at the sprawling seaside steel plant in Mariupol was not immediately clear; Earlier Saturday, a Ukrainian military unit posted a video purportedly taken two days earlier in which women and children hiding underground, some for two months, said they longed to see the sun.

Members of the Ukrainian special forces recount the defense of kyiv and ask for weapons to face the Russian army in the east

“We want to see peaceful skies, we want to breathe fresh air,” a woman said in the video. “You just have no idea what it means to us to just eat, drink some sweetened tea. For us, it is already happiness”.

As the battle for the port raged, Russia claimed it had taken control of several villages elsewhere in the eastern Donbas region and destroyed 11 Ukrainian military targets overnight, including three artillery depots. Russian attacks also hit populated areas.

Associated Press journalists observed shelling in residential areas of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city; Regional Governor Oleh Sinehubov said three people were killed. In the Luhansk area of ​​the Donbas, Governor Serhiy Haidai said six people were killed during the shelling of a town, Gorskoi.

In Sloviansk, a town in northern Donbas, the AP saw two soldiers arrive at a hospital, one of them fatally wounded. Nearby, a small group of people gathered outside a church where a priest blessed them with water on Holy Saturday.

While British officials said Russian forces had not gained significant new ground, Ukrainian officials announced a countrywide curfew ahead of Easter Sunday, a sign of the war’s halt and threat to the entire country. .

Mariupol has been a key Russian target since the invasion began on February 24 and has taken on great importance in the war. Completing its capture would give Russia its biggest victory yet, after a nearly two-month siege reduced much of the city to smoldering ruins.

It would deprive Ukrainians of a vital port, free Russian troops to fight elsewhere and establish a land corridor to the Crimean peninsula, which Moscow seized in 2014. Russian-backed separatists control parts of Donbas.

An aide to Ukraine’s presidential office, Oleksiy Arestovich, said during a briefing on Saturday that Russian forces had resumed airstrikes on the Azovstal plant and were trying to storm it. A direct attempt to seize the plant would represent a reversal of an order given by Russian President Vladimir Putin two days earlier.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu informed Putin on Thursday that all of Mariupol, with the exception of Azovstal, had been “liberated.” At the time, Putin ordered him not to send troops to the plant, but instead to blockade it, in an apparent attempt to starve those inside and force their surrender.

Ukrainian authorities have estimated that around 2,000 of their troops are inside the plant along with civilians sheltering in its underground tunnels. Arestovic said they were trying to counter the new attacks.

Early Saturday, the Ukrainian National Guard’s Azov Regiment, which has members in hiding at the plant, released the video of some two dozen women and children. Its contents could not be independently verified, but if authentic, it would be the first video testimony of what life has been like for civilians trapped underground there.

The video shows soldiers giving candy to children who respond by bumping their fists. One girl says that she and her relatives “have not seen the sky or the sun” since they left home on February 27.

The regiment’s deputy commander, Sviatoslav Palamar, told the AP that the video was taken on Thursday. The Azov Regiment traces its roots to the Azov Battalion, which was formed in 2014 by far-right activists at the start of the separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine and drew criticism for some of its tactics.

More than 100,000 people — down from the prewar population of around 430,000 — are believed to remain in Mariupol with little food, water or heating, according to Ukrainian authorities, who estimate more than 20,000 civilians have been killed in the city during the Russian blockade.

Satellite images released this week showed what appeared to be a second mass grave near Mariupol, with local officials accusing Russia of burying thousands of civilians to hide the massacre taking place there. The Kremlin has not commented on the satellite images.

Ukrainian officials had said they would try again on Saturday to evacuate women, children and elderly people from Mariupol, but like previous plans to move civilians out of the city, it failed. Petro Andryushchenko, adviser to the mayor of Mariupol, said Russian forces did not allow Ukrainian-organized buses to take residents to Zaporizhzhia, a city 227 kilometers (141 miles) to the northwest.

“At 11 o’clock, at least 200 Mariupol residents gathered near the Port City shopping center, waiting for the evacuation,” Andryushchenko posted on the Telegram messaging app. “The Russian army approached the residents of Mariupol and ordered them to disperse, because now there will be shelling.”

At the same time, he said, the Russian buses gathered about 200 meters away. Residents who boarded were told they would be taken to separatist-occupied territory and not allowed to disembark, Andryushchenko said. His account could not be independently verified.

In the attack on Odessa, Russian troops fired at least six missiles, according to Anton Gerashchenko, adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister. Defense forces repelled some of the rockets, but at least one hit, he said.

“City residents heard explosions in different areas,” Gerashchenko said through a Telegram post. “Residential buildings were attacked. One victim is known. She got burned in her car in a courtyard of one of the buildings.”

Presidential chief of staff Andriy Yermak later reported that the 3-month-old baby was among the five dead.

In his late-night video address, Zelensky lamented all the casualties of the war, noting that Easter commemorates the resurrection of Christ after his death by crucifixion.

“We believe in the victory of life over death,” he said. “No matter how fierce the battles are, there is no chance of death defeating life. Everybody knows that. Every Christian knows it.”

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