Russian forces opened artillery fire on cities in eastern Ukraine, killing and wounding dozens of civilians, and began storming the bombed steel plant in Mariupol, where dozens were evacuated after weeks of shelling against the city’s last pocket of resistance.
The governor of the Eastern Donetsk region said 21 Russian attacks killed Tuesday, the highest number of known deaths since April 8, when a rocket attack on the Kramatorsk railway station killed at least 59 people.
Adding pressure on Moscow, the European Union leader on Wednesday called on the 27-nation bloc to ban Russian oil imports in a new wave of sanctions.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen outlined the EU’s toughest measures to date, warning the Kremlin that “you will not get away with it”.
101 come out of the steel plant
Thanks to weekend evacuation efforts, 101 people – including women, the elderly and 17 children, at least every six months – came out of bunkers under the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol to “see the light of day in two months,” Osnat said. Lubrani, UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Ukraine.
Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Irina Vereshchuk said on Wednesday that authorities plan to continue efforts to evacuate civilians from Mariupol and nearby areas if the security situation allows. Lubrani also expressed hope for further evacuations, but said nothing had been worked out.
One evacuee said she went to sleep at the factory every night, fearing she would not wake up.
Alena, 20, is holding her one-year-old son Sergei while they wait to board during an evacuation of civilians in Kramatorsk, Ukraine, on Tuesday. (Andriy Andrienko / Associated Press)
“You can’t imagine how scary it is to sit in a bomb shelter, in a damp and wet basement, and it bounces and trembles,” said Elina Tsibulchenko, 54, on her arrival in the Ukrainian-controlled city of Zaporizhia, about 230km northwest of Mariupol, in a column of buses and ambulances.
She said that if the shelter was hit by a bomb like the ones that left the huge craters she saw the second time she dared to go outside, “we will all be ready.”
The evacuees, some of whom were in tears, made their way from the buses to a tent offering food, diapers and connections to the outside world. Some of the evacuees inspected the shelves with donated clothes, including new underwear.
Russian assault headquarters
The news of the abandoned was gloomier. Ukrainian commanders said Russian tank-backed forces had begun storming the vast enterprise, which includes a maze of tunnels and bunkers 11 square kilometers.
It was not clear how many Ukrainian fighters were still inside, but the Russians said there had been about 2,000 in recent weeks and 500 had been reported wounded. Several hundred civilians remain there, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Irina Vereshchuk said.
“We will do everything possible to repel the attack, but we call for urgent measures to evacuate the civilians who remain in the plant and for their safe removal,” said Svyatoslav Palamar, deputy commander of the Ukrainian Azov Regiment. the Telegram messaging application.
He added that the plant had been shelled by naval artillery and air strikes throughout the night. Two civilian women were killed and 10 civilians were injured, he said.
In a night video address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that by storming the steel plant, Russian forces had violated safe evacuation agreements. He said previous evacuations “are not a victory yet, but it is already a result. I believe there is still a chance to save other people.”
Among those killed in new artillery attacks in Donetsk on Tuesday were 10 people at a chemical plant in the town of Avdievka, Donetsk Governor Pavlo Kirilenko said.
“Another cynical crime”
“The Russians knew exactly where to aim – the workers had just finished their shift and were waiting for a bus at a bus stop to take them home,” he wrote in a Telegram post. “Another cynical crime of Russians on our land.”
Two other civilians were killed and two were injured in a shelling night in the neighboring Luhansk region, Governor Sergei Haidai said, adding that Russian attacks were intensifying.
To the north, near the strategic hub of Izyum, Russia has deployed 22 battalion tactical groups in an attempt to advance along the northern axis of Donbass, the British Ministry of Defense said on Wednesday. Each unit usually numbers about 700 soldiers.
WATCH The UN-led evacuation of Mariupol will continue:
The UN-led evacuation of Mariupol will continue
The first convoy of civilians to escape a destroyed steel plant in Mariupol, Ukraine, has reached relative safety in a Ukrainian-controlled city. Deputy Prime Minister Irina Vereshchuk told reporters that several hundred civilians remain at the plant. 2:19
Although struggling to break through Ukraine’s defenses and gain momentum, Russia probably intends to go beyond Izyum to capture the cities of Kramatorsk and Severodonetsk, according to British estimates, and to surround Ukrainian troops in the Kharkiv region. However, Moscow’s pressure is slow as Ukrainian fighters dig in and use long-range weapons, such as howitzers, to target the Russians.
The United States believes that Ukrainians have pushed Russian forces about 40 kilometers east of Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city, in recent days. Extending the distance to the front line makes it difficult for Russia to target the city with artillery fire. Ukrainian authorities say their forces have regained control of at least 11 villages around Kharkiv in the past week, most of them occupied by the Russians for more than two months.
Ukraine’s eastern industrial center, Donbass, which includes Donetsk and Luhansk, remains Moscow’s stated goal after failing to take Kyiv in the first weeks of the war.
Explosion in Lviv
Explosions were also heard in Lviv, in western Ukraine, near the Polish border. The strikes damaged three substations, cut off electricity and disrupted water supply in parts of the city, and injured two people, the mayor said. Lviv was a gateway for NATO-supplied weapons and a refuge for those fleeing fighting in the east.
A spokesman for Russia’s Defense Ministry, Major General Igor Konashenkov, said Russian planes and artillery had hit hundreds of targets in the past day, including army fortresses, command posts, artillery positions, fuel and ammunition depots and radar equipment.
Ukrainian authorities say the Russians have also attacked at least half a dozen railway stations across the country.
Firefighters put out a fire after a Russian bombing of a park in Kharkiv, Ukraine, on Tuesday. (Felipe Dana / Associated Press)
The attack on the Azovstal steel plant began almost two weeks after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his military not to storm the plant to finish off defenders, but to block it. The first civilians evacuated from the destroyed plant came out during a brief ceasefire in an operation monitored by the United Nations and the Red Cross.
Some of the elderly evacuees looked exhausted when they arrived. Some of the younger people, especially mothers comforting babies and other children, seemed relieved.
“I am very happy to be on Ukrainian soil,” said a woman who gave only her first name, Anna, and arrived with two children aged 1 and 9. “Honestly, we thought we weren’t going to get out of there.”
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