Zaporizhia, Ukraine (AP) – Rescuers tried to evacuate more civilians from tunnels under an iron mill in Mariupol as Ukrainian fighters took a final stand to prevent Moscow from taking full control a strategically important port city.
Dozens of people were evacuated from the Azovstal plant on Friday and handed over to representatives of the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross, Russian and Ukrainian officials said. The Russian military said the group of 50 included 11 children.
Russian officials and Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Irina Vereshchuk said evacuation efforts would continue over the weekend. The final evacuees were followed by about 500 other civilians who exited in the last days of the factory and city.
The battle for Ukraine’s last stronghold in a ruined city that Russia attacks seems even more desperate. And the growing speculation that President Vladimir Putin wants to end the fight for Mariupol in order to deliver victory to the Russian people in a timely manner. Victory Day Monday The largest patriotic holiday on the Russian calendar.
In the approaching celebration of victory over Nazi Germany during World War II, cities in Ukraine are preparing for the expected escalation of Russian attacks, and officials are urging residents to heed warnings of air strikes. .
“These symbolic appointments make a Russian aggressor look like a red bull,” said Yevhen Yenin, Ukraine’s first deputy interior minister. “While the whole civilized world remembers the victims of horrific wars these days, the Russian Federation wants to park and prepare to dance to its bones in Mariupol”.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky also warned people not to go to forests left recently under Russian occupation due to numerous anti-personnel mines and travel cables.
On Saturday, a Russian rocket destroyed the National Museum of Ukraine, dedicated to the life and work of an 18th-century philosopher, a local council said. He posted photos on Facebook where the Gregory Skovoroda Museum appeared to be on fire.
An indicator of its importance in the cultural heritage of Ukraine, Skovoroda’s resemblance decorated the Ukrainian banknote.
The museum is located in Skovorinivka, in the Kharkiv region near the Russian border, where intense fighting took place.
According to Russia’s latest estimates, there are approximately 2,000 Ukrainian fighters They are hidden in a huge labyrinth Tunnel and bunker under the Azovstal steel mill. They repeatedly refused to give up. Ukrainian officials said before the evacuation on Friday that several hundred civilians had been trapped there and fears for their safety had grown as fighting intensified in recent days.
Katerina Prokopenko, whose husband Denis Prokopenko, commanded the Troops of the Azov regiment A desperate request was also made to the fighters inside the factory. He said they were willing to go to a third country to wait for the war, but they would never give up on Russia because it meant “filter camps, prisons, torture and death”.
If nothing is done to save his wife and his staff, “they will stand without giving up,” he told The Associated Press on Friday.
Zelensky said “influential states” were involved in attempts to rescue the soldiers, though he mentioned nothing.
“We are also working on diplomatic options to rescue our troops who are still in Azovstal,” he said in a video speech overnight.
UN officials are taking civilian evacuation attempts seriously, but it appears the latest displaced people have been relocated to Zaporizhia, a Ukrainian-controlled city about 140 miles (230 kilometers) northwest of Mariupol, where the others fled the city. Brought.
Several previous plant evacuations The AP spoke about the horrible Contaminated in a death setting, in an underground bunker with little food and water, poor medical care and lost hope. Some said they felt guilty for leaving others.
“They really need our help. “We have to release them,” said Serhiy Kuzmenko, 31, who fled their bunker with his wife, eight -year -old daughter and four others, leaving another 30 behind.
Fighters guarding the factory said in a telegram on Friday that Russian troops fired on an evacuation vehicle in the factory area, killing one soldier.
Moscow did not immediately recognize another battle on Friday.
Before destroying the factory, Russian forces were fighting for significant victory elsewhere, after 10 weeks of destructive war that killed thousands of people, forced millions of people to flee the country and destroyed most of cities on earth.
Ukrainian officials said the risk of a massive bombing had risen before Victory Day. Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said authorities will strengthen road patrols in the capital. In Ukraine’s southern Odessa region, which was the target of two missile attacks on Friday, a curfew was declared.
The general staff of the Ukrainian army said its forces had repelled 11 attacks in the Donbas region and destroyed tanks and armored vehicles, further undermining Putin’s ambitions after a futile attempt to seize the Kiev. Russia did not acknowledge the loss.
The Ukrainian army also said it had made progress in northeastern Kharkov, recapturing five villages and a sixth. Meanwhile, one person was killed and three were injured on Friday in a Russian bombing in Ukraine’s eastern city of Lyman in Ukraine’s Donetsk region.
Russia took control of the rest of Mariupol after two months of bombing. In preparation for Victory Day, municipal workers and volunteers cleaned up the remaining city, which had a pre -war population of over 400,000. Probably 100,000 civilians remain there despite severe shortages of food, water, electricity and heat. Bulldozers collect debris as people drag the streets between dilapidated buildings. The flags of Russia were raised.
The collapse of Mariupol would deprive Ukraine of an important port. It will also allow Russia to establish a land corridor on the Crimean peninsula, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014, and release some Russian troops to fight in the Donbas, an eastern industrial region that the Kremlin says is its main target. The capture of the city also has symbolic significance as it was a scene of some of the most horrific war sufferings and surprisingly intense resistance.
Reported by Gambrel from Lviv, Ukraine. Associated Press journalists Trisha Thomas in Rome, Jessica Fish in Zaporizhia, Inna Varenitsa and David Keaton in Kiev, Yura Karmanau in Lviv, Mstislav Chernov in Kharkov, Lolita Baldor in Washington and AP partners around the world.
Source: Huffpost
