Russia Defeats Odessa Following Victory Day As 44 Civilian Bodies Discovered Elsewhere –

Zaporizhia, Ukraine (AP) – Russia has attacked Ukraine’s important southern port of Odessa, Ukrainian officials said Tuesday, and said they found the bodies of 44 civilians in the rubble of a building in the northeast. destroyed a few weeks ago. .

Meanwhile, a Ukrainian official said at least 100 civilians were trapped in an iron mill in the besieged city of Mariupol, where Ukrainian fighters were the last.

44 bodies were found in a five -story building that collapsed in March in Izium, about 120 kilometers (75 miles) from the city of Kharkov. It was under attack by Russia From the beginning of the war until the end of February.

“This is another horrible crime in the war of the Russian occupiers against the civilian population!” Oleh Sinehubov, head of the regional administration, spoke about the deaths on social media.

Izium is located on a main route in the eastern industrial region of the Donbas, which is now at the center of the Russian war in Ukraine. Sinehubov did not say exactly where the building was.

Previously, the Ukrainian army claimed that Russian forces fired seven rockets into the air the previous day. Port of Odessa on the Black Sea, Press mall and warehouse. The military said one person was killed and five were injured.

Ukraine says that at least some of the ammunition used dates back to the Soviet era, making it unreliable. Ukrainian, British and American officials warn that Russia is rapidly running out of stocks of accurate weapons and may not produce quickly, increasing the risk of using inaccurate missiles. With the exacerbation of rivalry. This could lead to greater damage and more civilian deaths.

But the Center for Defense Strategies, a Ukrainian think tank that monitors the war, said Moscow had used several precision weapons against Odessa: supersonic surface-to-air missile daggers, or “daggers”.

The use of advanced guided missiles allows Russia to fire from a distance without potential anti-aircraft fire.

The strikes took place on the same day when Russian President Vladimir Putin celebrated his country’s biggest patriotic holiday so he could not be proud of significant new victories on the battlefield. On Monday, he witnessed the formation of troops and military equipment at the Victory Day parade in Moscow’s Red Square to celebrate the Soviet Union’s role in defeating Nazi Germany in 1945.

Many Western analysts expected Putin to use Victory Day in Ukraine to blow the trumpet or announce the rise, but he did not. Instead, he again tried to justify the war as a necessary response to what he presented as a hostile Ukraine.

Putin has long fought with former Soviet republics east of NATO. Ukraine and its Western allies have denied any threat to the country.

“The risk is growing every day,” Putin said. “Russia issued a preventive response to the aggression. It was a forced, timely decision and the only correct one”.

Intense fighting also took place in eastern Ukraine, including a Mariupol steel mill where Russian forces were trying to seize the last pocket of Ukrainian resistance.

One of the Ukrainian steel mill fighters said they were still defending the city. Valery Paditel, head of the border guards in the Donetsk region, said that “the fighters are doing everything possible to make the city’s defenders proud in the future”.

Hundreds of civilians have been evacuated in recent days along with militants. But Petro Andriushchenko, a councilor of the Mariupol mayor, said in a post on social media on Tuesday that “at least 100 civilians remain in addition to the army” at the factory, which has miles of underground tunnels. At one point, Ukrainian and Russian authorities announced that all civilians had left the factory.

Andrushchenko said that Russian forces continued to blow up the plant with heavy weapons and that “attempts (to plant) to attack from the ground remain unsuccessful”.

The Ukrainian military warned on Tuesday that Russia could be a target for the country’s chemical industry. The claim was not immediately explained in the report. But during the war, Russia’s bombing targets were oil depots and other industrial facilities.

Additionally, on Monday afternoon, satellite images analyzed by the Associated Press showed two ships near the Ukrainian snake island.

One of the ships seen in Planet Labs ’PBC photos appears to be a landing craft. Ukraine has repeatedly attacked Russia’s positions there recently, suggesting that Russian forces may have attempted to withdraw personnel or withdraw personnel from the Black Sea island.

After sudden fierce resistance forced the Kremlin to abandon its attempt to invade Kiev in the early days of the war, Moscow forces focused on capturing Donbass.

But the battles there were back and forth, chaos in every village. Some analysts have suggested that Putin could declare war, not just a “special military operation” and order a national mobilization, with so-called reservations, to combat the escalation of the conflict.

Ultimately, he gave no signal where the war was headed or how he intended it to be rescued. In particular, it left the question of how Russia would deploy more forces to continue the war unanswered.

“Without concrete steps to build new forces, Russia will not be able to fight a long war and time is running out for its army in Ukraine,” wrote Philip O’Brien, professor at the University of Strategic Studies, on Twitter. . St. Andrews in Scotland.

Nigel Gould Davis, the former British ambassador to Belarus, said: “Russia has not won this war. He is starting to disappear. “

He said that unless Russia takes a significant step forward, “the balance of power will continue to shift in Ukraine’s favor, especially when Ukraine has access to increasing costs of Western military equipment.”

When Putin laid a crown in Moscow, the sirens of the air strike rang again in the Ukrainian capital. But Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a speech on Victory Day that his country would eventually defeat the Russians.

“There will be two days of victory in Ukraine soon,” he said in the video. He added: “We are fighting for freedom, for our children, and therefore we will win.”

Zelensky’s adviser clarified Putin’s speech by saying Russia has no interest in escalating war using nuclear weapons or being directly involved in NATO.

In Washington, President Joe Biden signed a bipartisan proposal to continue the “Land Lease” program of World War II, which helped defeat Nazi Germany and strengthen its allies in Kiev and Eastern Europe.

Russia has a tactical group of about 97 battalions in Ukraine, mainly in the east and south, which is slightly up compared to last week, according to a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the Pentagon’s analysis. According to the Pentagon, each unit has approximately 1,000 troops.

The official said that in general, Russia’s efforts in the Donbas in recent days have not achieved any significant progress and continue to face strong resistance from Ukrainian forces.

Satellite photos show the intense fire on Monday in Russian -controlled territory in southern Ukraine. The cause of the fire is immediately investigated. However, Planet Labs photos showed thick smoke rising east of Vasilivka, a city surrounded by nature reserves.

Reported by Gambrel from Lviv, Ukraine. Jessica Fish in Bakhmut, David Keaton in Kiev, Yura Karmanau in Lvov, Mstislav Chernov in Kharkov, Lolita Baldor in Washington, and AP staff around the world contributed to this report.