LVIV, Ukraine (AP) – The Ukrainian army said Thursday it had retaken parts of the south and repelled Russian attacks in the east as bloody fighting took place at an iron mill in Mariupol where the Ukrainian troops in tunnels and bunkers. . From the Russian attack.
Ten weeks after the start of the devastating war, Ukrainian and Russian forces are fighting in the countryside as Moscow tries to gain momentum in the eastern industrial center of the Donbas. Russia is focused on a region where Moscow -backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian forces for years after more intense resistance crushed its troops and thwarted its original goal of capturing the capital.
In an interview Thursday with the Associated Press, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said he did not expect Russia’s attack to be “delayed in this way”. Some Russian troops used allied Belarus as an offensive on February 24, and Lukashenko publicly supported the operation.
“But I am not immersed in this problem to say that it is in line with the plan, as the Russians say, or what I feel,” the head of the authority said. He added that the use of nuclear weapons was “unacceptable”, but he could not say whether Russia had such plans.
In addition to the intense bombing in the Donbas, Russian forces also continued to bomb train stations and other supply line targets across the country, as part of an attempt to curb arms supplies to the West. Who are critical of the defense of Ukraine.
Ukrainian forces said on Thursday they had achieved some victory on the border between the southern Kherson and Mykolaiv regions and repelled 11 Russian attacks on the Donetsk and Luhansk regions that make up the Donbass.
Ukrainian officials say five people have been killed and at least 25 injured in attacks in the Donbas over the past 24 hours. The attacks also damaged homes and schools.
Airstrike sirens sounded across the country on Wednesday night, as Russian attacks were recorded near Kiev, the capital; Cherkasy and Dnipro in central Ukraine; And southeast to Zaporizhia. In the Dnipro, authorities said it collided with a railroad structure, following several initial attacks on train stations across the country. The sirens sounded again on Thursday in the western city of Lvov, which is the gateway to Western weapons and a relatively safe haven for people fighting in the Far East.
“Ukraine’s defense has largely halted Russia’s advance in eastern Ukraine,” he said late Wednesday.
“Russian forces have intensified air strikes against transport infrastructure in western Ukraine (Wednesday), but they will not be able to stop the delivery of aid to the West in Ukraine,” he added.
In the most notable example of the slowdown of Ukrainian forces in Russia’s development, Ukrainian fighters found themselves at the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, the last pocket of resistance in a city otherwise controlled by Moscow forces.
“With the support of the aircraft, the enemy continued the attack to control the plant,” the chief of staff of the Ukrainian armed forces said on Thursday. A stream of black smoke rose from the plant on Wednesday.
Ukrainians said Russian forces entered the perimeter of the factory and also bombed from above. The Kremlin has denied any involvement in the attack.
Denis Prokopenko, commander of the Ukrainian Azov regiment guarding the plant, said in a video posted on Wednesday that the raids continued until the next day and heavy and bloody fighting.
The fall of Mariupol would deprive Ukraine of an important port, allow Russia to build a land corridor on the Crimean peninsula, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014, and free troops that fought in the Donbas.
The city and the plant became symbols above all the disasters caused by the war. The Russians destroyed most of Mariupol during a two-month siege that left civilians with little food, water, medicine or heat. Civilians trapped in the factory may be more affected. About 100 of them were evacuated over the weekend, the first time some have seen sunlight in months.
The Russian government has said it will open another evacuation corridor from the plant at some specific time, Thursday through Saturday. But there was no immediate confirmation of these deals from other parties, and many of the Kremlin’s earlier guarantees failed, with Ukrainians blaming the Russians for continuing the fighting.
It is unclear how many Ukrainian fighters are at the plant, but the Russians have reported about 2,000 fighters in the past few weeks and 500 have been wounded. Several hundred civilians also remain there, the Ukrainian side said this week.
The United Nations announced on Wednesday that more than 300 civilians had been evacuated from Mariupol and other surrounding communities. The refugees arrived in Zaporizhia, about 230 kilometers to the northwest, where they were receiving humanitarian aid.
Meanwhile, Belarus announced the start of military exercises on Wednesday. A senior Ukrainian official said the country would be ready to act if Belarus joined the struggle.
The British Defense Ministry said on Thursday that it did not expect the exercises to pose a threat to Ukraine right now, but that Moscow would use them “to deploy Ukrainian forces in the north to prevent them from fighting in the Donbas.”
In addition to providing weapons to Ukraine, Europe and the United States have tried to punish Moscow with sanctions aimed at the country’s vital energy sectors. A senior EU official on Wednesday called on the 27-member bloc to ban Russia’s oil imports, a major source of revenue.
The proposal requires the united consensus of EU countries and is likely to be a hot debate. Hungary and Slovakia have already announced that they will not take part in the oil sanctions, but could get an exemption.
The European Union is also talking about a possible embargo on Russian natural gas. The blockade has already approved the cessation of coal imports.
This was reported by Anna in Ukraine, from Zaporizhia. Associated Press reporters Jessica Fish in Zaporizhia, Inna Varenitsia and David Keaton in Kiev, Yura Karmanau in Lviv, Mstislav Chernov in Kharkov, Lolita Baldor in Washington, and AP staff around the world contributed to the report this.
Source: Huffpost
