Russian forces are stepping up their offensives to bring down Mariupol in southeastern Ukraine, where at least 20,000 people have already been killed according to kyiv, while in Washington Joe Biden for the first time accused Vladimir Putin of ” genocide”.
On Wednesday morning, Moscow announced the surrender of more than a thousand Ukrainian soldiers in the very strategic port city that its forces have been besieging and bombarding for more than 40 days, and encircling for more than a month.
Some “1,026 Ukrainian soldiers from the 36th Marine Brigade voluntarily laid down their arms and surrendered” in the area of the Ilyich metallurgical plant, 150 of whom were injured and were taken to Mariupol hospital, the official said. Russian Defense Ministry.
Overnight Tuesday-Wednesday, a Russian state television report announcing the surrender showed men in camouflage uniforms carrying wounded on stretchers.
Taking the city would be an important victory for the Russians as it would allow them to consolidate their coastal territorial gains along the Sea of Azov by linking the Donbass region, partly controlled by their supporters, to the Crimea that Moscow has annexed in 2014.
Between 20,000 and 22,000 people died in the city, Pavlo Kirilenko, Ukrainian governor of the Donetsk region, told CNN on Tuesday, while admitting that it was “difficult to talk about a number of victims”, the city being cut off from the rest of the world by Russian forces.
Its downfall seems inevitable to some military experts, but after more than six weeks of fighting, Ukrainian forces are still clinging and resisting the Russians.
The fighting is now concentrated in the gigantic industrial zone of the city.
On Wednesday, the Ukrainian army indicated on Telegram that the Russian aerial bombardments on the city continued, targeting in particular the port and the vast Azovstal metallurgical complex.
This labyrinth transformed into a bastion by the Ukrainian forces of Mariupol, who entrench themselves in its kilometers of underground, promises a fierce battle for the total control of the city.
Blocked drains
On the ground, AFP journalists embarked with the Russian forces in Mariupol saw the charred ruins of this city that the Ukrainians say “90% destroyed”.
Since the beginning of the week there have been rumors, so far unconfirmed, of the use of chemical weapons by Russian forces in Mariupol.
The Ukrainian Azov battalion notably accused the Russians of having dropped a “poisonous substance” which would have caused neurological and respiratory problems.
According to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, “Russian forces could use different riot control agents, including tear gas mixed with chemical agents” against “Ukrainian fighters and civilians” in Mariupol.
For Moscow, “the threat of chemical terrorism” comes from the Ukrainians, assured Oleg Syromolotov, Russian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, to the Ria Novosti press agency.
The bombardments also continue in the east of the country, where kyiv has called on civilians to flee as soon as possible in fear of an imminent major Russian offensive for total control of Donbass, which Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian separatists share. since 2014.
But Ukraine will not open any humanitarian corridors on Wednesday as the Russians “blocked buses in the Zaporizhia region (south)” and “violate the ceasefire” in the Lugansk region, making the situation ” dangerous,” a government official said Wednesday morning.
Analysts believe that Russian President Vladimir Putin, mired in the face of fierce Ukrainian resistance, wants to secure a victory in this region ahead of the May 9 military parade in Red Square marking the Soviet victory over the Nazis in 1945.
US private company Maxar Technologies has released satellite images it says show ground forces advancing into Ukraine from the Russian border.
The Ukrainian governor of Lugansk, one of the two regions of Donbass with Donetsk, revealed on Tuesday that around 400 civilians had been buried in the city of Severodonetsk alone since the start of the war on February 24.
“Horrible Things”
In Washington, Joe Biden for the first time accused Vladimir Putin of “genocide” in Ukraine. Since the beginning of the conflict, this word had until then been used several times by the Ukrainian head of state Volodymyr Zelensky but never by the American administration.
“It is increasingly clear that Putin is simply trying to erase the very idea of being able to be a Ukrainian”, developed the American president during a trip to Iowa. If “the lawyers, at the international level”, will decide on the qualification of genocide, “for me, it looks like it”, he added.
Claiming that “evidence was mounting” of “horrible things the Russians did in Ukraine”, the Democrat predicted that the world would “find even more of the devastation”.
Volodymyr Zelensky praised on Twitter the “real words of a real leader”, while calling “urgently for more heavy weapons” to “avoid more Russian atrocities”.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is rightly expected in kyiv for “practical decisions, including the delivery of weapons”, declared Oleksiï Arestovitch, adviser to the Ukrainian president, on the German public channel ZDF.
Joe Biden had in the past called Mr. Putin a “war criminal”, especially after the discovery at the end of March in Boutcha, northwest of kyiv, of the bodies of hundreds of Ukrainians. According to kyiv, these are civilians “massacred” by the Russians who had just withdrawn from the city.
On Tuesday, Vladimir Putin, whose country denies any abuse in Ukraine, called the accusations linked to Boutcha on Tuesday “fake”.
All around kyiv, Ukrainian authorities say they continue to find bodies every day.
On Tuesday, the body of the mayor of Gostomel, who died on March 7, was exhumed in front of Ukrainian investigators, as part of a war crime investigation. His body was hoisted from its grave, and the police filmed each of his wounds, including one to the head, according to AFP journalists present on the spot.
No recent assessment of civilian victims of the conflict is available, but it probably exceeds ten thousand dead.
On the military front, the Kremlin recently admitted “significant losses”, but without quantifying them. At the end of March, Moscow had recognized the death of 1,351 soldiers for 3,825 wounded, the first figures for more than three weeks.
kyiv announced on Tuesday the arrest of one of Mr. Putin’s relatives, deputy and wealthy businessman Viktor Medvedchuk, 67, on the run since the end of February, and released a photo of him in handcuffs.
On Tuesday evening, Mr. Zelensky proposed to Moscow to “exchange” him for Ukrainians in captivity in Russia, while talks between kyiv and Russia have stalled.