KYIV, April 17 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Russian missile strikes hit Ukraine’s capital Kyiv and other cities as Moscow said that its troops had cleared the urban area of Mariupol, and that only a small contingent of Ukrainian fighters remained inside a steelworks in the besieged southern port.
Russia’s claim to have all but taken control of Mariupol, the scene of the war’s heaviest fighting and worst humanitarian catastrophe, could not be independently verified. It would be the first major city to have fallen to Russian forces since the Feb 24 invasion.
“The situation is very difficult” in Mariupol, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told the Ukrainska Pravda news portal. “Our soldiers are blocked, the wounded are blocked. There is a humanitarian crisis … Nevertheless, the guys are defending themselves.”
As Russia launched more long-range attacks following the sinking of its Black Sea fleet’s flagship, Moscow said that its warplanes had struck a tank repair factory in Kyiv.
An explosion was heard and smoke rose over the south-eastern Darnytskyi district. The mayor said that at least one person was killed and medics were fighting to save others.
The Ukrainian military said that Russian warplanes that took off from Belarus had fired missiles at the Lviv region near the Polish border and that four cruise missiles were shot down by Ukrainian air defences.
The western city has been relatively unscathed so far, and serves as a haven for refugees and international aid agencies.
In the port city of Mariupol, the Ilyich steelworks, where defenders have held out in underground tunnels and bunkers, was reduced to a ruin of twisted steel and blasted concrete, with no sign of defenders present.
The Russian Defence Ministry said that its troops had “completely cleared” Mariupol’s urban area of Ukrainian forces and blockaded the “remnants” in the Azovstal steelworks, RIA news agency said.
It said that as of Saturday, Ukrainian forces in the city had lost more than 4,000 people, RIA added.
The governor of Kharkiv province in the east said that at least one person had been killed and 18 injured in a missile strike.
In Mykolaiv, a city close to the southern front, Russia said that it had struck a military vehicle repair factory.
A month and a half into President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, Russia is trying to capture territory in the south and east after withdrawing from the north following an assault on Kyiv that was repelled in the capital’s outskirts.
Russian troops that pulled out of the north left behind towns littered with bodies of civilians, evidence of what United States President Joe Biden this week called genocide – an attempt to erase Ukrainian national identity.
Russia denies targeting civilians and says that the aim of its “special military operation” is to disarm its neighbour, defeat nationalists and protect separatists in the south-east.
If Mariupol falls, it would be Russia’s biggest prize of the war so far. It is the main port of the Donbas, a region of two provinces in the south-east which Moscow demands be fully ceded to separatists.
Putin appears determined to capture more Donbas territory to claim victory in a war that has left Russia subject to increasingly punitive Western sanctions and with few allies.
The Ukrainian military command in the east of the country, where Kyiv says it expects a major assault, said in a Facebook post that it had repelled 10 attacks on Saturday, destroying 15 tanks, 24 other armoured vehicles and three artillery systems.
The Russian Defence Ministry said that its anti-aircraft systems in the Odessa region shot down a Ukrainian transport plane delivering weapons supplied by Western governments. It did not provide any evidence. There was no immediate comment from Kyiv.
Zelenskyy said that about 2,500 to 3,000 Ukrainian troops have been killed so far, and up to 20,000 Russian troops.
Moscow has given no updates on its casualties since Mar 25, when it said that 1,351 had died. Western estimates of Russian losses are many times higher, while there are few independent estimates of Ukraine’s losses. — NNN-AGENCIES
