According to the Guardian, invading Russian forces attacked a steel plant in Mariupol, a southern Ukrainian city that has been under siege for nearly seven weeks. Mariupol’s capture would aid Moscow’s reported plans for a full-scale offensive in Eastern Ukraine.
Ukraine has vowed to “fight to the end” in the besieged port city of Mariupol after Russia called for the surrender of remaining Ukrainian troops. With the last Ukrainian fighters in Mariupol refusing to give to Russian demands, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy declared that Russia was “deliberately attempting to destroy everyone who is there,” CNNÂ reports.
According to President Zelenskyy, Ukraine urgently requires more heavy weapons from the West to save the Azov Sea port city.
A recent AP Dispatch by Adam Schreck and Mstylav Chernov reports that the constant Russian bombings throughout the invasion “have reduced much of [Mariupol] to a smoking ruin.” They continued saying that taking Mariupol “would be Moscow’s biggest victory of the war yet and free up troops to take part in a potentially climactic battle for control of Ukraine’s industrial east.”
A report from PBS cites Russian military estimations that claim 2,500 Ukrainian troops and 400 foreign mercenaries had dug in at the massive Azovstal steel mill, covering more than four square miles and laced with tunnels.
Moscow gave the defenders until midday to surrender, saying those who did so would be “guaranteed to keep their lives.”
The Ukrainians declined to surrender, as they had previously rejected previous ultimatums.
“All those who will continue resistance will be destroyed,” Maj Gen Igor Konashenkov, the Russian Defense Ministry’s spokesman, said in the latest demand.
Meanwhile, Russian forces carried out aerial attacks near Kyiv and elsewhere, ostensibly to weaken Ukraine’s military capacity ahead of the anticipated assaults.
Russia said on Sunday that it had used precision-guided missiles to attack an ammunition plant near Kyiv overnight, the third such strike in as many days. Explosions were also reported overnight in Kramatorsk, the eastern city, where rockets killed at least fifty people earlier this month at a train station crowded with civilians attempting to flee the Russian offensive, the new AP Dispatch reports.
President Zelenskyy told Ukrainian journalists that the ongoing siege of Mariupol, which has cost trapped and starving civilians their lives, could derail efforts to end the war, The Press-Enterprise reports.
