The last fighters entrenched in Mariupol fear a final assault on Saturday on the eve of the commemoration in Moscow of the victory against Nazi Germany, as Russian strikes intensify on eastern Ukraine with sixty people missing in the bombing of a school.
These people were taking refuge in the Lugansk region in eastern Ukraine, regional governor Sergei Gaïdaï said on Sunday. The village of “Bilogorivka suffered an airstrike. The bombs hit the school and unfortunately it was completely destroyed,” the governor said on his Telegram account.
“There were a total of 90 people. 27 were saved […] Sixty people who were in the school are most likely dead,” he said.
“The enemy has not ceased offensive operations in the eastern operational zone in order to establish full control over the territory of the Donetsk, Lugansk and Kherson regions, and to maintain the land corridor between these territories and occupied Crimea” since 2014 , said the Ukrainian general staff on Sunday morning.
He said that in the Donetsk region, Russian troops continued their offensive operations around Lyman, Popasnyansky, Severodonetsk and Avdiivka. And that the situation was “tense” on the side of Moldova.
Zelensky at the G7
On the Russian side, the Ministry of Defense claims in its briefing on Sunday the destruction of the “command post of a mechanized brigade”, in the Kharkov region (east), as well as “the communication center of the military airfield of Chervonoglinskoye near the village of Artsyz”.
Separately, the air defense destroyed “two more Ukrainian Su-24 bombers and a Ukrainian Air Force Mi-24 helicopter over Serpents’ Island, and a Bayraktar-TB2 unmanned aerial vehicle was shot near the city of Odessa,” according to the same source.
Ukrainian authorities have been warning for several days of a possible intensification of Russian attacks as the May 9 commemoration approaches.
For his part, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is due to participate on Sunday in a virtual meeting of the leaders of the G7, of which Germany holds the presidency this year. This third meeting since the beginning of the year will be dedicated to addressing the situation in Ukraine.
US President Joe Biden had mentioned this meeting a few days earlier, about possible additional sanctions against Russia.
“We are always open to additional sanctions,” he said on Wednesday, adding that he would discuss with G7 members “what we will and will not do.”
Evacuated civilians
In Mariupol, after many calls and futile attempts in recent weeks, “we have evacuated the civilians of Azovstal”, launched President Zelensky on Saturday evening in his daily message, citing the number of 300 exfiltrated people. “We are now preparing for the second phase […] : the wounded and the medical personnel”.
Hundreds of civilians had also taken refuge in the galleries of the Azovstal steelworks, which houses the last defenders of Mariupol.
Moscow announced on Wednesday a unilateral three-day ceasefire from Thursday morning to allow civilians in Azovstal to leave.
But the Ukrainian authorities maintained that the Russians had again attacked this factory during this period.
“The order of the (Ukrainian) president has been carried out: all women, children and elderly people have been evacuated from Azovstal,” Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk announced earlier on Saturday.
According to kyiv, these operations have enabled a total of nearly 500 people to flee in one week, under the aegis of the UN and the International Committee of the Red Cross.
And, “of course, we are also working to evacuate our soldiers. All these heroes defending Mariupol,” continued the president, without giving a figure. “It’s extremely difficult. But it is very important”.
Ukraine asked Doctors Without Borders (MSF) on Saturday evening to organize a mission to evacuate and treat the soldiers entrenched in the steelworks.
” Until the end “
According to Yevgenia Tytarenko, a military nurse, whose husband, a nurse and member of the Azov regiment, and his colleagues still occupy the factory, “many soldiers are in serious condition. They are injured and have no medicine”. “Food and water are also lacking,” she says.
“I will fight until the end,” wrote her husband Mykhaïlo, in an SMS that AFP was able to consult. They got married two days before the Russian invasion.
“Our units in the area of the Azovstal plant continue to be blocked”, noted the Ukrainian general staff in its morning bulletin on Sunday, referring to “Russian assault operations” with “the support of the artillery and tank fire.
Mariupol, a southeastern port city that had nearly 500,000 inhabitants before the war, was almost completely wiped off the map by two months of Russian bombardment.
“The enemy is trying to finish off the defenders of Azovstal, he is trying to do this before May 9 to give (Russian President) Vladimir Putin a gift,” warned Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to the Ukrainian president, on Friday.
On Sunday, Russian President Vladimir Putin assured that “as in 1945, victory will be ours”, multiplying the comparisons between the Second World War and the conflict in Ukraine in his May 8 greetings.
Vladimir Putin, who thinks he cannot “afford to lose” in Ukraine, is “convinced that redouble his efforts will allow him to progress”, estimated Saturday Bill Burns, director of the American intelligence agency CIA.
There is, however, no “concrete evidence” that Russia, which placed its deterrent forces on high alert shortly after the start of its military intervention, “is preparing the deployment or even the potential use of tactical nuclear weapons in this conflict, he stressed.
Ukrainian counter-offensive
The Russians had obtained between Friday and Saturday limited territorial gains around Severodonetsk, one of the main localities of the Donbass still in the hands of the Ukrainians, but this should not lead to a complete encirclement, noted Saturday the American Institute of study of war (ISW).
Russia has so far only been able to claim complete control of one major city, Kherson.
In Kharkiv, the Ukrainian counter-offensive to put Ukraine’s second city out of range of enemy artillery has even gained momentum, with the capture of several Russian positions, again according to the ISW.
“Ukrainian forces are regaining ground along a wide arc around Kharkiv and no longer focusing on a limited thrust, demonstrating an ability to launch offensive operations on a larger scale than so far in this war “, explained this institute.
So much so that the Russian army had to blow up three road bridges “to slow down the counter-offensive” in this region, according to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense.
The Ukrainian navy claimed to have destroyed a hundred kilometers off Odessa, not far from the tiny Serpents’ Island, the Russian landing ship Serna using a combat drone developed in Turkey.
Information not confirmed by Russia, which declared on the other hand to have sunk “the Ukrainian assault boat “Stanislav””.