KYIV/MARIOUPOL, Ukraine (Reuters) – Russian forces resumed an assault on the last Ukrainian elements entrenched in the metallurgical site of Azovstal, Mariupol, on Saturday, two days after Moscow announced its victory in the port city, local officials said.
The longest battle since the launch of the offensive in Ukraine, the siege of Mariupol, should allow, in the event of a Russian victory, to connect the Donbass region to Crime, the peninsula annexed in 2014 by Moscow.
After almost two months of siege and shelling, the Russian president said on Thursday that the port city on the shores of the Sea of Azov had been “liberated”, although several hundred Ukrainian fighters remained holed up in the Azovstal steelworks. .
Vladimir Poutine ordered his army to give up an attack against this vast industrial complex, endowed with an important network of shelters and underground tunnels, and to impose on him the place a perfectly hermetic seat.
“I consider that the planned assault on the industrial zone is not necessary,” he added. “There is no need to go down into these catacombs and crawl underground through these industrial buildings (…). Seal off this industrial site so that even a fly cannot pass.”
Ukraine, which denies that the entire city of Mariupol fell to the Russians, interpreted this decision as an admission of powerlessness while continuing to demand the establishment of safe evacuation corridors for trapped civilians. fighting, estimated at 120,000 by President Volodimir Zelensky.
According to Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to the Ukrainian presidency, the Ukrainian forces entrenched in the industrial complex are holding out, “even if the situation is difficult”, and they are preparing counter-attacks.
In the eastern region of Luhansk, the Russian army intensified the bombardments and the Ukrainian forces were forced to leave some of their positions to avoid being annihilated.
“It’s not pleasant to leave our positions, but it’s not catastrophic,” said Governor Serhiy Gaidai.
Bombings were also reported Kharkiv, in the north-west of Donbass, where two people were killed and 19 others injured, and Odessa.
Russia had justified the launch of the war in Ukraine at the end of February – which it describes as a “special military operation” – by the need to demilitarize and “denazify” its neighbor, as well as to protect the Russian-speaking populations of the east. of the country of a “genocide”.
(Reporting Pavel Polityuk, with Maria Starkova, Natalia Zinets and other Reuters journalists; French version Nicolas Delame)
by Pavel Polityuk