Kiev, Ukraine (AP)-Russian troops are launching an offensive in the eastern Donbass region to completely seize Ukraine’s industrial center, but little progress has been made as a fierce Ukrainian offensive has slowed their efforts, officials said Saturday. Ukrainians and British.
Russia continues to fight for full control of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, which make up the Donbas, and aims to ensure a “land route between these territories and occupied Crimea”, including destroying the last pocket of the Ukrainian resistance to the city. port besieged. This was announced by the General Staff of Ukraine Mariupol in the morning update.
Ukrainian forces have repelled eight Russian attacks in the past 24 hours in the two regions, destroying nine tanks, 18 armored vehicles and 13 vehicles, an oil tanker and three artillery systems, staff said.
“The subdivisions of the Russian occupiers will be grouped.” Russia’s enemy continues to make missiles and bombs on military and civilian infrastructure, “staff said on its Facebook page.
Luhansk governor Serhi Haidai said on Saturday that two people had been killed in a Russian bombing in the city of Popasna.
“Apart from the fact that street fighting in the city has been going on for weeks, the Russian military continues to fire on multi -storey residential buildings and private houses,” Haidai wrote in an Instagram messaging app . “Just yesterday the locals resisted five enemy artillery attacks, not all of them survived”
The British Defense Ministry said that despite their increased activity, “Russian forces have not made significant progress in the past 24 hours as Ukrainian counterattacks continue to hamper efforts.”
Russia has not yet established air and naval control over the Ukrainian resistance and, despite President Vladimir Putin’s declaration of victory in Mariupol, “fierce fighting continues, thwarting Russia’s attempts to seize the city. , which further slows down their development in the Donbas ”. “, – they told the Ministry of Defense.
Russia has withdrawn dozens of troops from Mariupol to intensify its offensive in the Donbas, while other troops continue to keep Ukrainian troops in the city at the Azovstal steel mill, the last remaining stronghold, the officials of Ukraine.
Putin is said to have ordered his forces not to raid the factory to put an end to the defenders, but to seal them up, in an apparent attempt to suppress them.
Russian forces are destroying 2,000 Ukrainian fighters still trapped inside, city hall said on Friday. “Every day they drop a few bombs on Azovstal,” said Petro Andriushchenko, adviser to the mayor of Mariupol. “The fights, the bombing, the bombing don’t stop”.
As a result of the weekly bombing, Mariupol became increasingly a smoldering devastation, and Russian state television in Promoskov showed the separatist Donetsk flag raised at the city’s highest point on its television tower. It also announced that it was the main building of the burning Azovstal steel mill.
Under cover of darkness, Ukrainian forces were able to deliver weapons by helicopter to a besieged steel mill, said Oleksky Danilov, secretary of the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council.
In total, the Kremlin has launched more than 100,000 soldiers and mercenaries from Syria and Libya to fight in Ukraine and is deploying more troops to the country every day, Danilov said.
“We have a difficult situation, but our military is protecting our state,” he said.
Mariupol gained great importance in the war. Its acquisition would deprive Ukrainians of a viable port and complete the land corridor between Russia and the Crimean peninsula that Putin seized from Ukraine in 2014.
It will also allow Putin to throw more forces into Donbass and its coal mines, factories and other industries, or what the Kremlin has now declared its main target, in a potentially culminating battle.
The latest satellite images from Maxar Technologies have revealed what appears to be a second mass grave near Mariupol. There are several recently excavated parallel trenches in the city of Vinohradn, which are about 40 meters (131 feet) long, Maxar said in a statement.
The other day, Maxar posted photos of apparently more than 200 mass graves excavated just outside Ryupol, in the town of Manhush, near the cemetery. This has led to Ukraine’s allegations that the Russians are trying to cover up the massacre of civilians in the city.
“This reaffirms that the occupiers are organizing the collection, burial and cremation of corpses in all districts of the city,” Andrushchenko said in a Telegram messaging app.
Ukrainians estimate 9,000 bodies will be found in the graves seen in photos posted on Thursday. The Kremlin did not respond to satellite images.
According to Ukrainian authorities, more than 100,000 people – less than the pre -war population of 430,000 – are believed to be trapped in Mariupol with food, water and heat traps, and more than 20,000 civilians were killed in the nearly two -month siege. . Most attempts to evacuate civilians from the city have failed due to Russia’s continued bombing of Ukrainians.
Reported by fish from Zaporizhia, Ukraine. Associated Press reporters Mstislav Chernov and Felipe Dana in Kharkov, Ukraine, Yura Karmanau in Lvov, Inna Varenitsia Kvir and Robert Burns and Amer Madan in Washington contributed to this report, as well as other staff. AP worldwide. .
Source: Huffpost
