Russian forces in Ukraine attempted to attack a steel plant of soldiers and civilians in the southern city of Mariupol on Saturday in an attempt to crush the last corner of resistance in a place of deep symbolic and strategic value to Moscow, Ukrainian officials said.
After the alleged attack on the eve of Orthodox Easter, the Kremlin claimed that its forces had seized all the shattered city except the Azovstal plant, and that Russian forces had besieged other cities and towns in southern and eastern Ukraine.
A three-month-old baby girl was among six people fired by cruise missiles in Russia’s Black Sea port city of Odessa, officials said.
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Meanwhile, President Volodymyr Zelensky said he would meet with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in Kyiv on Sunday. He announced the visit at a news conference and did not immediately share more details. The White House declined comment.
Zelensky also mourned the death of the infant in Odessa. “The war started when this baby was one month old. Can you imagine what’s going on?” he said. “They’re just bastards. … I have no more words for it, just bastards.
The fate of Ukrainians at the huge seaside steel mill at Mariupol was not immediately clear; Earlier on Saturday, a Ukrainian military unit released a video purportedly taken two days earlier in which women and children were underground, some for two months, saying they longed to see the sun.
“We want to see peaceful skies, we want to breathe fresh air,” said a woman in the video. “You just don’t know what it means for us to just eat, drink some sweet tea. For us, it’s already happiness.”
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As the battle for the harbour, Russia claimed it had taken control of several villages in the eastern Donbass region and destroyed 11 Ukrainian military targets overnight, including three artillery warehouses. Russian attacks also attacked populated areas.
Associated Press reporters witnessed shelling in residential areas of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city; The regional government Ole Sinyhubov said three people were killed. In the Luhansk region of the Donbass, Governor Serhi Haidai said that six people were killed during the shelling of one village, Gorskoi.
In Sloviask, a town in the northern Donbass, AP saw two soldiers arriving at a hospital, one of whom was mortally wounded. Nearby, a small group of people gathered outside a church where a priest blessed them with water on Holy Saturday.
While British officials said the Russian military had not gained significant new ground, Ukrainian officials declared a nationwide curfew ahead of Easter Sunday, signaling a break in the war and a threat to the country as a whole.
Mariupol has been a major Russian objective since the offensive began on February 24 and has grown in importance in the war. Completing its capture would give Russia its biggest victory ever, after a nearly two-month siege turning much of the city into a smoking ruin.
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It would deprive Ukrainians of a vital port, free Russian troops to fight elsewhere and establish a land corridor to the Crimean peninsula, which Moscow seized in 2014. Russia-backed separatists control parts of the Donbass.
Oleksey Erestovich, an adviser to Ukraine’s presidential office, said during a briefing on Saturday that the Russian military had resumed airstrikes on the Azovstal plant and was trying to strike it. A direct attempt to take over the plant would represent a reversal from an order ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin two days earlier.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu told Putin on Thursday that the entire Mariupol, except Azovstal, had been “liberated”. At the time, Putin ordered them not to send troops to the plant, but instead to shut it down, in an apparent attempt to starve the people inside and force them to surrender.
Ukrainian officials have estimated some 2,000 of their soldiers are inside the plant and civilians are also taking shelter in its underground tunnels. Erestovich said they were trying to counter new attacks.
Earlier on Saturday, the Azov regiment of Ukraine’s National Guard, whose members are hiding at the plant, released videos of nearly two dozen women and children. Its contents cannot be independently verified, but if authentic, it would be the first video evidence of what life has been like for civilians trapped underground.
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The video showed soldiers giving sweets to children who responded by clenching their fists. A young girl says she and her relatives have “neither seen the sky nor the sun” since leaving the house on February 27.
Svyatoslav Palmar, the regiment’s deputy commander, told the AP that the video was shot on Thursday. The Azov Regiment has its roots in the Azov Battalion, which was formed in 2014 by far-right activists at the start of the separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine and criticized for some of its tactics.
More than 100,000 people – from a pre-war population of about 430,000 – are believed to live in Mariupol with little food, water or heat, according to Ukrainian officials, who estimate that more than 20,000 lived in the city during the Russian blockade. Civilians have been killed.
Satellite images released this week showed what appears to be a second mass grave near Mariupol, and local officials accused Russia of burying thousands of civilians to hide the slaughter. The Kremlin did not comment on satellite images.
Ukrainian officials said they would try again on Saturday to evacuate women, children and older adults from Mariupol, but like previous plans to evacuate civilians from the city, it failed. Petro Andryshchenko, an adviser to the mayor of Mariupol, said the Russian military did not allow Ukrainian-organized buses to carry residents to Zaporizhzhya, a city 227 kilometers (141 mi) to the northwest.
“At 11 o’clock, at least 200 Mariupol residents gathered near the Port City shopping center, waiting for evacuation,” Andryushchenko posted on the Telegram messaging app. “The Russian army dispersed the inhabitants of Mariupol and ordered them to disperse, as there would be shelling.”
At the same time, he said, the Russian buses gathered about 200 meters away. Andryshchenko said residents on board were told they were being taken to separatist-held territory and were not being allowed to disembark. His account could not be independently verified.
In the attack on Odessa, Russian troops fired at least six missiles, according to Anton Gerashchenko, adviser to the Minister of the Interior of Ukraine. He said the defense forces fired a few rockets, but hit at least one.
“The residents of the city heard explosions in different areas,” Gerashenko said via Telegram post. “Residential buildings were hit. One is already aware of the victim. He got burnt in the courtyard of a building in his car.”
Presidential Chief of Staff Andrey Yermak later said a 3-month-old baby was among the dead.
In his nightly video address, Zelensky mourned all the casualties of the war, noting that the Easter holiday commemorates Christ’s resurrection after his death on the cross.
“We believe in the victory of life over death,” he said. “No matter how fierce the battle, there is no chance for death to defeat life. Everyone knows that. Every Christian knows this.”
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