Heavy fighting is raging at a steel plant in Mariupol as Russian forces attempt to finish off the city's last-ditch defenders and complete the capture of the strategically vital port.
The Associated PressSmoke rises from the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, Ukraine, on Thursday. Heavy fighting is raging at the besieged plant as Russian forces attempt to finish off the city's last-ditch defenders and complete the capture of the strategically vital port.The bloody battle came amid growing suspicions that President Vladimir Putin wants to present the Russian people with a major battlefield success — or announce an escalation of the war — in time for Victory Day on Monday.
Palamar urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to help ensure the evacuation of the wounded and civilians still in the bunkers. He denounced the Russians for "refusing to observe any ethical norms and destroying people before the eyes of the world."Russia maintains that its forces are not entering the maze of tunnels at the steel plant, but Palamar said the Russian forces are fighting in the Azovstal mill.
"He showed them the underground tunnels which are leading to the factory," Gerashchenko said in a video posted late Wednesday. "Yesterday, the Russians started storming these tunnels, using the information they received from the betrayer."Counting both able-bodied and wounded among their ranks, the Ukrainian troops' choice seems to be either fighting to the death or surrendering in hopes of being spared under the terms of international humanitarian law.
Kateryna Prokopenko, right, wife of Azov Regiment commander Denys Prokopenko, and Yulia Fedosiuk, wife of Azov Regiment member Arseny Fedosiuk, show photos of their husbands during an interview with The Associated Press, in Rome, on April 29. Their husbands are defending a besieged steel plant in the southern city of Mariupol and the women fear if they are captured, they will be tortured and killed.
To the west of Mariupol, Ukrainian forces made some gains on the border of the southern regions of Kherson and Mykolaiv, where Russian troops were reportedly trying to launch a counteroffensive, and repelled 11 Russian attacks in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, the military said. Five people were killed and at least 25 more wounded in shelling of several eastern cities over the past 24 hours, Ukrainian officials said.
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