KYIV, Ukraine
Russia hurled its military
might against Ukrainian cities and towns and poured more troops into the war,
seeking to slice the country in two in a potentially pivotal battle for control
of the eastern industrial heartland of coal mines and factories.Member of security forces help an injured man following a Russian bombing of a factory in Kramatorsk, eastern Ukraine, Tuesday, April 19, 2022, killing at least one person and injuring three others.
The fighting unfolded along a
boomerang-shaped front hundreds of miles long in what is known as the Donbas.
If successful, it would give President Vladimir Putin a victory following the
failed attempt by Moscow’s forces to storm the capital, Kyiv, and
heavier-than-expected casualties.
In Mariupol, the devastated
port city in the Donbas, Ukrainian troops said the Russian military dropped
heavy bombs to flatten what was left of a sprawling steel plant — believed to
be the defenders’ last holdout — and hit a hospital where hundreds were
staying.
The Ukrainian General Staff
said Wednesday that Russia was continuing to mount offensives at various
locations in the east as its forces probe for weak points in the Ukrainian
lines. The General Staff said in a statement that defeating the last resistance
in the Azovstal steel mill in Mariupol remains Russia’s top priority.
The eastern cities of Kharkiv
and Kramatorsk came under deadly attack. Russia also said it struck areas
around Zaporizhzhia and Dnipro west of the Donbas with missiles.
Russian Defense Ministry
spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said Moscow’s forces bombarded numerous
Ukrainian military sites, including troop concentrations and missile-warhead
storage depots, in or near several cities or villages. Those claims could not
be independently verified.Russian military vehicles move on a highway in an area controlled by Russian-backed separatist forces near Mariupol, Ukraine, April 18, 2022. Mariupol.
Both sides have described the
assault that began Monday as a new phase of the war.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr
Zelenskyy said the Russian military was throwing everything it has into the battle,
with most of its combat-ready forces now concentrated in Ukraine and just
across the border in Russia.
“They have driven almost
everyone and everything that is capable of fighting us against Ukraine,” he
said in his nightly video address to the nation.
Despite claims that they are
hitting only military sites, the Russians continue to target residential areas
and kill civilians, he said.
“The Russian army in this war
is writing itself into world history forever as the most barbaric and inhuman
army in the world,” Zelenskyy said.
Weeks ago, after the abortive
Russian push
to take Kyiv, the Kremlin declared that its main goal was the capture
of the mostly Russian-speaking Donbas, where Moscow-backed separatists have
been fighting Ukrainian forces for eight years.
A Russian victory in the
Donbas would deprive Ukraine of the industrial assets concentrated there,
including mines, metals plants and heavy-equipment factories.
A senior U.S. defense
official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the Pentagon’s
assessments of the war, said the Russians had added two more combat units,
known as battalion tactical groups, in Ukraine over the preceding 24 hours.
That brought the total units in the country to 78, all of them in the south and
the east, up from 65 last week, the official said.
That would translate to 55,000
to 62,000 troops, based on what the Pentagon said at the start of the war was
the typical unit strength of 700 to 800 soldiers. But accurately determining
Russia’s fighting capacity at this stage is difficult.
A European official, likewise
speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss military assessments, said Russia
also has 10,000 to 20,000 foreign fighters in the Donbas. They are a mix of
mercenaries from Russia’s private Wagner Group and Russian proxy fighters from
Syria and Libya, according to the official.
While Ukraine portrayed the
attacks on Monday as the start of the long-feared offensive in the east, some
observers noted that an escalation has been underway there for some time and
questioned whether this was truly the start of a new offensive.
The U.S. official said the
offensive in the Donbas has begun in a limited way, mainly in an area southwest
of the city of Donetsk and south of Izyum.
Justin Crump, a former British
tank commander now with the strategic advisory company Sibylline, said the
Ukrainian comments could, in part, be an attempt to persuade allies to send
more weapons.
“What they’re trying to do by
positioning this, I think, is ... focus people’s minds and effort by saying,
‘Look, the conflict has begun in the Donbas,’” Crump said. “That partly puts
pressure on NATO and EU suppliers to say, ‘Guys, we’re starting to fight now.
We need this now.’”
President Joe Biden is
expected to announce a new weapons package in the coming days that will include
additional artillery and ammunition, according to a U.S. official, who was not
authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Canada and the Netherlands
also planned to send more heavy weapons, their prime ministers said.
Associated Press journalists
in Kharkiv said at least four people were killed and three wounded in a Russian
attack on a residential area of the city.
An explosion also rocked
Kramatorsk, killing at least one person and wounding three, according to AP
journalists at the scene.
In the southern city of
Bashtanka, an unspecified number of people were wounded when Russian forces
shelled the hospital, destroying the reception area and the dialysis unit, the
head of the regional council, Hanna Zamazeeva, said on Facebook.The tail of a missile sticks out in a residential area in Yahidne, near Dnipro, Ukraine
Eyewitness accounts and
reports from officials have given a broad picture of the extent of the Russian
advance. But independent reporting in the parts of the Donbas held by Russian
forces and separatists is severely limited, making it difficult to know what is
happening in many places on the ground.
Military experts said the
Russians’ goal is to encircle Ukrainian troops from the north, south and east.
Key to the campaign is the
capture of Mariupol,
which would deprive Ukraine of a vital port and complete a land bridge between
Russia and the Crimean Peninsula, seized from Ukraine in 2014. It would also
free up Russian troops to move elsewhere in the Donbas.
A few thousand Ukrainian
troops, by the Russians’ estimate, remained holed up in the sprawling Mariupol
steel plant, representing what was believed to be the last major pocket of
resistance in the city.
Russia issued a new ultimatum
to the Ukrainian defenders to surrender Wednesday after a previous ultimatum
was ignored. The Russian Defense Ministry said those who surrender will be
allowed to live and given medical treatment. There was no immediate response
from the Ukrainian troops, but they have repeatedly vowed not to give up.
The deputy commander of the
Azov regiment, who was among the troops remaining in Mariupol, said the Russian
military dropped heavy bombs on the steel plant and hit an “improvised”
hospital.
Serhiy Taruta, the former
governor of the Donetsk region and a Mariupol native, also reported the bombing
of the hospital, where he said 300 people, including wounded troops and
civilians with children, were sheltered.
The reports could not be
independently confirmed.
Zelenskyy said the Kremlin has
not responded to a proposal to exchange Viktor Medvedchuk, the jailed leader of
a pro-Russia party, for the Mariupol defenders. - AP
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