Russia renews strikes against military installations in Kyiv

Content of the article

Russian air raids and missile strikes hit Ukraine’s capital kyiv and other major cities on Saturday as Moscow launched longer-range attacks after the sinking of its Black Sea Fleet flagship.

Content of the article

In the beleaguered port of Mariupol, scene of the war’s heaviest fighting and worst humanitarian catastrophe, Russian troops continued their advances, hoping to make up for their failure to capture kyiv by seizing their first grand prize of the war. .

“The situation is very difficult” in Mariupol, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told the Ukrainska Pravda news portal. “Our soldiers are blocked, the wounded are blocked. There is a humanitarian crisis… Yet the guys are defending themselves.

Moscow said its fighter jets hit a tank repair plant in kyiv. An explosion was heard and smoke rose over the southeastern district of Darnytskyi. The mayor said at least one person had been killed and medics were fighting to save others.

Content of the article

The Ukrainian military said Russian warplanes that took off from Belarus fired missiles at the Lviv region near the Polish border and four cruise missiles were shot down by Ukrainian air defenses.

The western town has been relatively unscathed so far and serves as a haven for refugees and international aid agencies.

In Mariupol, Reuters reporters in Russian-held districts reached the Ilyich steelworks, one of two metallurgical plants where the defenders held out in underground tunnels and bunkers. Moscow claimed to have captured him on Friday.

The factory was reduced to a ruin of twisted steel and blown concrete, with no sign of defenders present. Several bodies of civilians lay scattered in the nearby streets, including a woman dressed in a pink parka and white shoes.

Content of the article

Someone had spray painted “mined” on a fence near a defaced gas station. In a rare sign of life, a red car drove slowly down an otherwise empty street, the word “children” scrawled on a card taped to the windshield.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said its troops had cleared the entire urban area of ​​Mariupol of Ukrainian forces and pinned down some fighters at steelworks in Azovstal, the RIA news agency reported. He quoted ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov as saying that on Saturday Ukrainian forces in the city had lost more than 4,000 people.

The governor of eastern Kharkiv province said at least one person was killed and 18 injured in a missile strike.

Smoke billowed from burning cars and the remains of what appeared to be an office building at the scene of an attack in the city as rescuers cleared mounds of debris blocking the road outside.

Content of the article

In Mykolaiv, a town near the southern front, Russia said it hit a military vehicle repair factory.

The attacks followed Russia’s announcement on Friday that it would step up its long-range strikes in retaliation for unspecified acts of ‘sabotage’ and ‘terrorism’, hours after confirming the sinking of its flagship Black Sea, the Moskva.

kyiv and Washington claim that the ship, whose sinking has become a symbol of Ukrainian defiance, was hit by Ukrainian missiles. Moscow says she sank after a fire and her crew of around 500 were evacuated.

The Russian Defense Ministry released a video of Navy chief Admiral Nikolai Yevmenov meeting on a parade ground around 100 sailors he said were part of the crew.

Content of the article

A month and a half after President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, Russia is trying to seize territories in the south and east after withdrawing from the north following an assault on kyiv which was pushed back to the outskirts of the capital.

Russian troops retreating from the north left behind towns littered with the bodies of civilians, evidence of what US President Joe Biden this week called genocide – an attempt to erase Ukrainian national identity.

Russia denies targeting civilians and says the purpose of its “special military operation” is to disarm its neighbor, defeat nationalists and protect separatists in the southeast.

“MARIUPOL WILL ALWAYS BE UKRAINE”

If Mariupol falls, it would be Russia’s biggest war prize so far. It is the main port of Donbass, a region of two provinces to the south-east which Moscow demands that it be entirely ceded to the separatists.

Content of the article

The owner of the two giant steelworks in Mariupol, Ukraine’s richest man, Rinat Akhmetov, has pledged to rebuild the city. “Mariupol has been and always will be a Ukrainian city,” Akhmetov told Reuters.

Ukraine says it has so far held back Russian advances elsewhere in the Donbass regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, where at least one person has been killed in overnight shelling.

In the frontline town of Luhansk, Lysychansk, civilians hunkered down and then fled for cover from incoming shells as thick smoke rose from a blackened store and burnt-out cars.

Ukraine gained the upper hand at the start of a war, in part by successfully deploying mobile units armed with Western-supplied anti-tank missiles against Russian armored convoys confined to roads by muddy terrain.

Content of the article

But Putin appears determined to capture more Donbass territory to claim victory in a war that has left Russia under increasingly punitive Western sanctions and with few allies.

An adviser to Zelenskyy said the country needed a faster supply of arms from its European Union partners. “Ukraine needs weapons. Not in a month. Now,” Mykhailo Podolyak said in a Twitter post.

Zelenskyy said around 2,500-3,000 Ukrainian troops have been killed so far and up to 20,000 Russian troops.

Moscow has given no update on its casualties since March 25, when it said 1,351 people had died. Western estimates of Russian casualties are several times higher, while there are few independent estimates of Ukrainian casualties.

Ukraine needs weapons

Ukraine says civilian deaths are impossible to count, estimating at least 20,000 killed in Mariupol alone.

Overall, about a quarter of Ukrainians have been driven from their homes, including a tenth of the population who have fled abroad.

Despite Darnytskyi’s attack, kyiv has continued to slowly reopen following Russia’s withdrawal from its outskirts in recent weeks, with the French embassy holding a flag-raising ceremony to mark its reopening.

Zelenskyy held a ceremony to present soldiers with medals in the lobby of an office building with sandbags partially blocking the doors.