প্রকাশ: 17/04/2022
Russia told
Ukrainian forces fighting in Mariupol to lay down arms on Sunday morning to
save their lives, but there were no immediate reports of activity three hours
after the ultimatum took effect at 0300 GMT in the strategic southeastern port.
Air raid sirens sounded across the country early in the day,
a regular occurrence, and a morning report from the Ukrainian military said
Russian air strikes on Mariupol continued while there were "assault
operations near the seaport."
Local media reported an explosion in the capital Kyiv but
Mykola Povoroznyk, the city's deputy mayor, said there were no explosions and
air defence systems had prevented Russian attacks.
Russia's Defence Ministry said its troops had cleared the
urban area of Mariupol and only a small contingent of Ukrainian fighters
remained in a giant steelwork on Saturday.
Moscow's claim to have all but taken control of Mariupol,
scene of the war's heaviest fighting and worst humanitarian catastrophe, could
not be independently verified. It would be the first major city to have fallen
to Russian forces since the Feb. 24 invasion.
"Taking into account the catastrophic situation that
has developed at the Azovstal metallurgical plant, as well as being guided by
purely humane principles, the Russian Armed Forces offer the militants of
nationalist battalions and foreign mercenaries from 06:00 (Moscow time) on
April 17, 2022, to stop any hostilities and lay down their arms," the
defence ministry said in a statement.
"All who lay down their arms are guaranteed that their
lives will be spared," it said, adding that the defenders could leave the
plant by 10 am without arms or ammunition.
There was no immediate response from Kyiv.
The Azovstal plant, described as a fortress in a city, lies
in an industrial area that looks out to the Sea of Azov and covers more than 11
square km (4 square miles), containing myriad buildings, blast furnaces and
rail tracks.
The city's defenders include Ukrainian marines, motorised
brigades, a National Guard brigade and the Azov Regiment, a militia created by
far-right nationalists that was later incorporated into the National Guard. It
was not immediately known how many were in the steelworks.
"The situation is very difficult" in Mariupol,
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy told the Ukrainska Pravda news portal. "Our
soldiers are blocked; the wounded are blocked. There is a humanitarian
crisis... Nevertheless, the guys are defending themselves."
The Ukrainian military said Russian warplanes that took off
from Belarus had fired missiles at the Lviv region near the Polish border and
four cruise missiles were shot down by Ukrainian air defences.
The western city, relatively unscathed so far, has served as
a haven for refugees and international aid agencies.
Twisted steel, blasted concrete
In Mariupol, Reuters journalists reached the giant Illich
steelworks, one of two metals plants where defenders had held out in
underground tunnels and bunkers. Moscow claimed to have captured it on Friday.
The factory was reduced to a ruin of twisted steel and
blasted concrete, with no sign of defenders present. Several bodies of
civilians lay scattered on nearby streets.
The Russian defence ministry said its troops had
"completely cleared" Mariupol's urban area of Ukrainian forces and
blockaded the "remnants" in the Azovstal steelworks, RIA news agency
said. It said that as of Saturday, Ukrainian forces in the city had lost more
than 4,000 personnel.
Zelenskiy accused Russia of "deliberately trying to
destroy everyone" in Mariupol and said his government was in touch with
the defenders. He did not address Moscow's claim that Ukrainian forces were no
longer in urban districts.
He said also that "extermination" of the fighters
in Mariupol would put an end to any form of negotiations with Russia.
Russia had said on Friday it would intensify long-range
strikes in retaliation for unspecified acts of "sabotage" and
"terrorism", hours after it confirmed the sinking of its Black Sea
flagship, the Moskva.
Kyiv and Washington say the ship, whose sinking has become a
symbol of Ukrainian defiance, was hit by Ukrainian missiles. Moscow says it
sank after a fire and its crew of around 500 were evacuated.
Russia's Defence Ministry published video of the head of the
navy, Admiral Nikolai Yevmenov, meeting on a parade ground with about a hundred
sailors it said were members of the crew.
If Mariupol falls it would be Russia's biggest prize of the
war so far. It is the main port of the Donbas, a region of two provinces in the
southeast which Moscow demands be fully ceded to separatists.
Ukraine says it has so far held off Russian advances
elsewhere in the Donbas regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, where at least one
person was killed in shelling overnight.
Ukraine gained the upper hand in the early phase of a war,
in part by successfully deploying mobile units armed with anti-tank missiles
supplied by the West against Russian armoured convoys confined to roads by
muddy terrain.
But Putin appears determined to capture more Donbas
territory to claim victory in a war that has left Russia subject to
increasingly punitive Western sanctions and with few allies.
The European Union's forthcoming round of sanctions on
Russia will target banks, including Sberbank, as well as oil, the head of the
European Commission Ursula von der Leyen told the German newspaper Bild am
Sonntag.
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