After almost two months of siege, the strategic Ukrainian port of Mariupol seemed on Wednesday close to falling into the hands of the Russians, who were intensifying their offensive on the east and south of the country.
In this context, the President of the European Council Charles Michel arrived in kyiv on Wednesday morning to show European support, 12 days after the visit to the Ukrainian capital of his counterpart from the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen.
“We may be living our last days, even our last hours,” said on the night of Tuesday to Wednesday, on his Facebook account, a commander of Ukrainian soldiers who are still resisting in the vast steelworks of Azovstal, the last island of resistance of Mariupol, a large city located on the Sea of Azov, at the southern end of the Donbass.
“The enemy is 10 times more numerous than us,” Serguiy Volyna, from the 36th brigade of the national navy, said on Facebook. “We call on and beg all world leaders to help us. We ask them to use the extraction procedure and take us to the territory of a third country”.
The Ukrainian Defense Ministry said on Wednesday morning that the Russian army “was concentrating most of its efforts on taking the city of Mariupol and continuing its attempted assaults near the Azovstal steel plant”.
Russia has not commented directly on developments. The pro-Russian separatists in the Donetsk region – which Mariupol belongs to – claimed that five Ukrainian soldiers defending the steel plant had laid down their arms and that 140 civilians had been evacuated.
Evacuate civilians
At least 1,000 civilians, especially women, children and the elderly, are holed up, with the fighters, “in the underground shelters” of the factory, the Mariupol municipal council said on Tuesday, which fears that more than 20,000 civilians are already dead in the city.
In this context, kyiv said it had reached “a preliminary agreement” with the Russians to set up an evacuation corridor from Mariupol on Wednesday. Residents were invited to gather at 2 p.m. local time (7 a.m. EDT) to leave for Zaporizhia. A journey of 200 km became with the war a journey, sometimes lasting several days, with more than ten checkpoints to cross.
“Given the catastrophic situation in Mariupol, we are focusing our efforts on this direction today,” Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk stressed.
On Tuesday evening, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused the Russians of “blocking all efforts to organize humanitarian corridors and save our people”.
Russia, which on Tuesday called on the defenders of Mariupol to end “their senseless resistance” after a first ultimatum on Sunday, is determined to take this port, which would allow it to connect Crimea, which it annexed in 2014, and the pro-Russian separatist republics of Donbass.
Its capture would also allow it to inject additional forces to reinforce its assault aimed at “liberating”, in Moscow’s words, the whole of Donbass, which the separatists only partially control.
“Assault attempts” in the Donbass
Fighting throughout this eastern region of Ukraine has intensified since Monday evening.
After a series of strikes claimed by Moscow on Tuesday, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense reported on Wednesday morning “attempted assaults” on the localities of Sulyguivka and Dibrivne, in the Kharkiv region, as well as on Rubizhne and Severodonetsk, in the Lugansk region.
The regional governor, Serguiï Gaïdaï, once again called on civilians to evacuate. “The situation is getting more complicated hour by hour,” he wrote on Telegram messaging. “Get yourself safe […] Go,” he added.
According to a senior US Defense Department official, Russia has increased its military presence in eastern and southern Ukraine, bringing the total of battalions in the country to 76.
The bombardments also intensified in the South, another front line, AFP noted. The villages of Mala Tokmashka and Orikhiv, 70 km southeast of Zaporizhia, have seen an upsurge in shelling.
While war still seemed a long way off last week, “now when it comes from the Russian side, houses shake and it’s much more common,” said resident Vitaly Dovbnya, who says he has a suitcase already packed in the trunk. of his car.
Artur Kharlamov, who arrived in Orikhiv after fleeing Melitopol, a southern city under Russian control, on Tuesday morning, claims to have seen Moscow troops digging trenches at three different places on the way. And fresh trenches are also visible on the Ukrainian side.
New weapons for Ukraine
“This new phase” of the war, as the head of Russian diplomacy Sergei Lavrov described it on Tuesday, promises to be fierce. Especially since Ukraine now receives heavy weapons that Westerners have long hesitated to provide to avoid an escalation of the conflict.
After the delivery of Howitzer artillery pieces announced last week by US President Joe Biden, the Ukrainians now have “more fighter jets at their disposal than two weeks ago”, said the spokesman for the Pentagon John Kirby.
“Without going into details about what other countries are providing, I would say they have received additional aircraft and spare parts to increase their fleet” of fighter jets, he added, implying that These were Russian-made devices.
The command of the Ukrainian air forces, however, specified that it had “not received new planes”, but “spare parts for the repair of existing aircraft”.
kyiv demanded from Westerners Mig-29s (of Soviet design) that its soldiers already know how to fly, and which a handful of Eastern European countries have.
The Norwegian government told him that it had given kyiv around 100 French-designed anti-aircraft missiles.
And Washington is set to approve a new military aid package for Ukraine amounting to $800 million, less than a week after an earlier announcement of a tranche of the same amount, several US media reported on Tuesday. .
Under these conditions, the call on Tuesday by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres to stop the fighting for a four-day “humanitarian pause” on the occasion of the Orthodox Easter seemed unlikely to be heard.
Towards new candidates for NATO
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, European countries that were not part of NATO seem increasingly ready to take the plunge.
The Parliament of Finland thus begins on Wednesday to debate joining the Atlantic Alliance to better protect itself against possible aggression from its Russian neighbor. With a candidacy now “very likely” in the coming weeks, despite the messages of deterrence sent by Moscow.
The debate is closely followed by neighboring Sweden, which is also considering joining NATO.
The United States and its allies, meeting on Tuesday by videoconference, also announced that they were going, in order to “increase pressure on the Kremlin”, to adopt “new sanctions”.
While overall global growth is slowed by the conflict, Russia, already under unprecedented sanctions, is set to see its economy shrink by 8.5% this year, according to new forecasts from the Monetary Fund. (IMF) on Tuesday.