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Russian forces are stepping up their offensive to bring down Mariupol in southeastern Ukraine. At least 20,000 people have already been killed according to kyiv. In Washington Joe Biden has for the first time accused Vladimir Putin of “genocide”.
On Wednesday morning, Moscow announced the surrender of more than a thousand Ukrainian soldiers in the very strategic port city that its forces have been besieging and bombarding for more than 40 days, and encircling for more than a month.
Some “1,026 Ukrainian soldiers from the 36th Marine Brigade voluntarily laid down their arms and surrendered” to the area of the Ilyich metallurgical plant. One hundred and fifty were injured and were taken to hospital in Mariupol, the Russian Defense Ministry said.
Overnight Tuesday-Wednesday, a Russian state television report announcing the surrender showed men in camouflage uniforms carrying wounded on stretchers.
Thousands of dead
Taking the city would be an important victory for the Russians, as it would allow them to consolidate their coastal territorial gains along the Sea of Azov by linking the Donbass region, partly controlled by their supporters, to the Crimea that Moscow annexed in 2014.
Between 20 and 22,000 people died in the city, Pavlo Kirilenko, Ukrainian governor of the Donetsk region, told CNN on Tuesday. However, he admitted that it was “difficult to mention a number of victims”, the city being cut off from the rest of the world by Russian forces.
Its downfall seems inevitable to some military experts, but following more than six weeks of fighting Ukrainian forces are still clinging and resisting the Russians. The fighting is now concentrated in the gigantic industrial zone of the city.
Target port
On Wednesday, the Ukrainian army indicated on Telegram that the Russian aerial bombardments on the city continued, targeting in particular the port and the vast Azovstal metallurgical complex.
This labyrinth transformed into a bastion by the Ukrainian forces of Mariupol, who entrench themselves in its kilometers of underground, promises a fierce battle for the total control of the city.
On the ground, AFP journalists embarked with Russian forces in Mariupol saw the charred ruins of this city that the Ukrainians say “90% destroyed”. Since the beginning of the week there have been rumors, so far unconfirmed, of the use of chemical weapons by Russian forces in Mariupol.
According to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, “Russian forces might use various anti-riot agents, including tear gas mixed with chemical agents” once morest “Ukrainian fighters and civilians” in Mariupol.
Bombings in the east
The bombardments also continue in the east of the country, where kyiv has called on civilians to flee as soon as possible in fear of an imminent major Russian offensive for total control of Donbass, which Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian separatists share. since 2014.
But Ukraine will not open any humanitarian corridors on Wednesday as the Russians “blocked buses in the Zaporizhia region (south)” and “violated the ceasefire” in the Lugansk region, which makes the situation ” dangerous,” a government official said Wednesday morning.
Analysts believe that Russian President Vladimir Putin, mired in the face of fierce Ukrainian resistance, wants to secure a victory in this region before the May 9 military parade in Red Square marking the Soviet victory over the Nazis in 1945.
“Genocide”
In Washington, Joe Biden for the first time accused Vladimir Putin of “genocide” in Ukraine. Since the beginning of the conflict, this word had until then been used several times by the Ukrainian head of state Volodymyr Zelensky but never by the American administration.
“It is increasingly clear that Putin is simply trying to erase the very idea of being able to be a Ukrainian”, developed the American president during a trip to Iowa. If “the lawyers, at the international level”, will decide on the qualification of genocide, “for me, it looks like it”, he added.
Joe Biden had in the past called Mr. Putin a “war criminal”, especially following the discovery at the end of March in Boutcha, northwest of kyiv, of the bodies of hundreds of Ukrainians. According to kyiv, these are civilians “massacred” by the Russians who had just withdrawn from the city.
On Tuesday, Vladimir Putin, whose country denies any abuse in Ukraine, called the accusations linked to Boutcha on Tuesday “fake”. All around kyiv, Ukrainian authorities say they continue to find corpses every day.
No recent assessment of civilian victims of the conflict is available, but it probably exceeds ten thousand dead. On the military level, the Kremlin recently admitted “significant losses”, but without quantifying them. At the end of March, Moscow had recognized the death of 1,351 soldiers for 3,825 wounded, the first figures for more than three weeks.