Ukraine: Mariupol fighters make desperate appeal, kyiv receives fighter jets
Ukraine has received fighter jets to help counter the Russian offensive in the east of the country, where the last entrenched Ukrainian fighters in Mariupol have appealed desperately to the international community for rescue.
“We may be living our last days, even our last hours,” said a besieged Ukrainian military commander in Mariupol, a strategic port in southeastern Ukraine, which Moscow has sworn to take control.
“The enemy outnumbers us ten times,” Serguiy Volyna, of the 36th Navy Brigade, said on Facebook. “We call on and beg all world leaders to help us. We ask them to use the extraction procedure and take us to the territory of a third country”.
Russia, for its part, claims to have opened a corridor supposed to allow Ukrainian forces who have decided to surrender to leave Mariupol. Tuesday evening, however, the Russian army deplored that “nobody” had taken this humanitarian corridor. The latter will be reopened once more on Wednesday from 11:00 GMT, according to the same source.
In this city where the authorities fear the death of 20,000 to 22,000 civilians, the fighting is concentrated around the Azovstal metallurgical complex.
Ukrainian fighters are entrenched there, but also “at least a thousand civilians, most of them women, children and the elderly, in the underground shelters” of the factory, the Mariupol municipal council said on Telegram on Tuesday.
Russia, which on Tuesday called on the defenders of Mariupol to cease “their senseless resistance” following a first ultimatum on Sunday, is determined to seize this port. This strategic take would allow him to make the connection between Crimea, annexed in 2014, and the pro-Russian separatist republics of Donbass.
– “Save our people” –
On Tuesday evening, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky renewed his call for the evacuation of civilians still present in Mariupol.
“The situation in Mariupol remains the same, as critical as it can be. The Russian military is blocking all efforts to organize humanitarian corridors and save our people,” Zelensky said in a video on his Facebook page.
With this offensive in eastern Ukraine, Russia confirms a “new phase” of the war it launched in February, in the face of which Ukraine’s Western allies have decided to respond by going much further in their military support, with the dispatch of combat aircraft.
“Today they have more fighter jets at their disposal than two weeks ago,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Tuesday during a press briefing.
“Without going into details regarding what other countries are providing, I would say they have received additional aircraft and spare parts to increase their fleet,” he added, implying that this was Russian-made devices.
kyiv demanded from its Western partners Mig-29s that its soldiers already know how to fly, and which a handful of Eastern European countries have.
After the dispatch of Howitzer artillery pieces announced last week by Joe Biden, this announcement testifies to a change in attitude of the West, who for more than a month refused to supply Ukraine with heavy armaments, to avoid any escalation of the conflict.
– New penalties –
Meeting on Tuesday by videoconference, the United States, France, Germany, Great Britain, Poland, Italy, Canada, Romania and Japan also decided “to increase the pressure on the Kremlin, notably through the adoption of new sanctions”.
These announcements on the western side come as the Ukrainian armed forces confirmed on Tuesday that the Russians had “intensified their offensive” along the front line in the east of the country.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov acknowledged on Tuesday that a “new phase of the Russian military operation” had begun. And his counterpart at Defense, Sergei Shoigu said he was following the “liberation plan” of the pro-Russian separatist “republics” of Donetsk and Lugansk (eastern Ukraine), established by Russian President Vladimir Putin who recognized their independence.
Russian air forces fired “high-precision missiles” and neutralized thirteen Ukrainian army strongholds, his ministry said, calling on the Ukrainians to surrender.
“Do not tempt fate, take the only correct decision, that of ceasing military operations and laying down your arms,” the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement.
According to a senior US Defense Department official, Russia has increased its military presence in eastern and southern Ukraine, bringing the total of battalions in the country to 76.
– Call for a “humanitarian pause” –
This new Russian offensive was denounced, from New York, by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, who asked both sides to stop fighting for a four-day “humanitarian pause” on the occasion of Orthodox Easter. .
On the ground, Russia has reported dozens of other missile strikes in southern Ukraine, another frontline.
Moscow, which already occupies the city of Kherson, “concentrates its forces” to advance towards the Mykolaiv region, further west, where the bombardments have intensified, indicated Tuesday Natalia Goumenyuk, spokeswoman for the southern command of the forces. Ukrainian armies.
In this region, the southern command of the Ukrainian armed forces reported on Tuesday the bombardment of a hospital in Bashtanka where the number of victims was not known.
In Kherson, the population continues to demonstrate once morest the Russian presence and boycotts products “imported by the occupiers”, also indicated the southern command.
burx / ob / ybl
