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Latest Russian-Ukrainian and Mariupol War News: Live Updates


ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine – Ukrainian civilians evacuated from the ruined city of Mariupol brought fresh accounts of survival and horror on Monday as Western nations worked to turn increasingly open aid promises. their expansion into action, preparing billions of dollars in military and economic assistance, an oil embargo and other unimaginable steps.

Despite the early morning shelling, the ceasefire evacuationoverseen by the Red Cross and the United Nations; considered the best and possibly last hope for hundreds of civilians who have been trapped for weeks in bunkers beneath the ruins of a steel mill Azovstal, and several unknowns are scattered around the ruins of the almost abandoned city.

Those who were once trapped in Mariupol outside the steel mill describe a fragile existence, relying on Russian rations cooked outside over wood fires amid daily shelling that left corpses inside. rubble.

Yelena Gibert, a psychologist who traveled to the Ukrainian territory with her teenage son on Monday, described “desperation and despair” in Mariupol, and said residents “started talking about commit suicide because they’re stuck in this situation.”

Western officials say fierce fighting in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk has brought minimal benefit to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s forces. But the Russians continued to fire rockets and artillery shells at Ukrainian military positions, cities, towns and infrastructure along the 300-mile front, including shelling. Azovstal treewhere the last remaining Ukrainian fighters in Mariupol were slain.

Credit…Alexander Ermochenko / Reuters

On Monday, Ukraine said it used Turkish-made drones to destroyed two Russian patrol boats off the Black Sea port of Odesa, just before a Russian missile hit the city, causing a ton of casualties and damage to a religious structure.

Russia’s war goals now include the annexation of Donetsk and Luhansk – partially controlled before the February 24 invasion by Russian-backed separatists – by mid-May, the State Department said. possibly the area south of Kherson.

“We believe the Kremlin may be trying to organize fake referendums to try to add to democratic or electoral legitimacy, and this is right in the Kremlin’s books,” said Michael Carpenter, US ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, told reporters at a State Department briefing in Washington.

As the war drags on and evidence of atrocities grows, the West craves retaliation that should have been denied months ago. The US Senate is preparing to receive President Biden’s $33 billion aid package for Ukraine, including a significant increase in heavy weapons, and the European Union is expected this week to do so. imposed an embargo on Russian oil, a major step for the bloc whose members have long depended on Russian energy.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosidays after becoming the highest-ranking American official to visit Kyiv since the war began, met President Andrzej Duda of Poland in Warsaw on Monday, in an effort to strengthen Washington’s partnership with a key NATO ally that has taken in millions of Ukrainian refugees and helped funnel weapons to the battlefield.

Credit…Tomasz Gzell / EPA, via Shutterstock

Ms. Pelosi called for the “strongest possible military response, the strongest possible sanctions” to punish Russia for the invasion, despite Moscow’s threats of retaliation against the West. “They made the threat of killing children and families, civilians and the rest of us,” she said.

More than two months after the invasion, Russia is struggling to capture and hold territory, according to a senior Pentagon official who spoke briefly to reporters on the background to discuss intelligence. . The official called Russia’s latest offensive in eastern Ukraine, the region known as the Donbas, “very cautious, very quiet” and in some cases “anemic”.

“We see minimal progress at best,” the official said, citing growing Russian advances in towns and villages. “They will go in, claim victory, then withdraw, only for the Ukrainians to take it.”

Britain’s defense intelligence agency said that of the 120 combat battalions Russia used during the war – about 65% of the entire ground combat force – more than a quarter were capable of “making combat possible”. inefficient”.

Some of Russia’s most elite units, including its Airborne Forces, have “suffered the highest levels of attrition”. British review saidadded that “it will probably take years for Russia to rebuild these forces.”

As fighting rages in eastern and southern Ukraine, Moscow on Monday faced a growing diplomatic backlash after Russia’s Foreign Minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, said that Jews were Jewish. “The greatest antimicrobials.”

Credit…David Guttenfelder for The New York Times

Mr. Lavrov made Sunday’s remarks to an Italian television journalist who asked him why Russia claims to be “Denazifying” Ukraine when its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, was Jewish and members of his family were killed during the Holocaust.

Mr. Lavrov replied that he thought Hitler was of Jewish origin, a claim that has been disproved by historians, and added, “For a long time we have heard wise Jews say that opposers the greatest are the Jews themselves.”

Israel’s Foreign Ministry summoned Russia’s ambassador to Israel to explain Lavrov’s remarks, while Israel’s foreign minister, Yair Lapid, demanded an apology. Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said of Lavrov’s remarks, “The goal of such lies is to accuse the Jews themselves of the most terrible crimes in history, committed against them. .”

Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader and the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in the United States, called Lavrov’s comments “disgusting.”

People who escaped from Mariupol and reached the southern city of Zaporizhzhia managed to survive in a Russian-occupied city destroyed by intense shelling, where Ukrainian officials say more than 20,000 inhabitants usually died. About 20 civilians sheltering under the Azovstal factory exited the city on Saturday, about 100 did so on Sunday, and an unspecified number later on Monday.

Every day at around 6 a.m., people outside the factory line up to receive rations distributed by Russian soldiers, Ms. Gilbert said. First, they had to listen to the Russian national anthem and then the anthem of the breakaway Ukraine called the People’s Republic of Donetskshe speaks.

Credit…Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

A number is scrawled on each resident’s hand, Ms. Gilbert said, and then they wait, sometimes all day, for the boxes of food. Inside a typical serving box are pasta, rice, oatmeal, canned meat, condensed milk, sugar, and butter. Ms. Gilbert said it was supposed to last a month, but that’s not always the case – especially when shared with a teenage boy.

In a city where many residential buildings have been destroyed and the rest lack electricity, heat or mostly running water, Ms. Gilbert says she and her son are among the lucky.

“Our apartment is still partially intact,” she said. “On one side, we have all our windows.”

Anastasiya Dembitskaya, 35, who had traveled to Zaporizhzhia with her two children and a dog, said the drop in fighting in Mariupol over the past few weeks had allowed phone service to immediately resume and other services. Small markets are open, selling food from Russia and Russia-controlled Ukraine. territory at the stratospheric price level.

“At least they’ve started emptying the bins, which is good,” Ms. Dembitskaya said. “Bodies, trash cans and power lines were all over the place.”

Ksenia Safonova, who also went to Zaporizhzhia, said that she and her parents wanted to leave Mariupol weeks ago but were crushed by rockets.

“As we tried to leave, intense shelling began,” she said. “Everything exploded. The jet was flying overhead and it was scary to leave.”

When food became scarce, she said, her family lived on rations provided by the Russian military. She pulled out a can of preserved meat that she said was part of a Russian humanitarian aid package. Its expiration date is January 31, almost a month before the invasion begins.

Credit…Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

Ms. Safonova and her family were finally able to leave Mariupol on April 26 in a minibus with six other people. At the checkpoints on the way to Zaporizhzhia, she said, Russian soldiers insulted her and her family, warning that Ukrainian forces would not greet them and might shoot them when they arrived.

Once, she said, soldiers tried to trick them into revealing their allegiance to Ukraine.

“At one checkpoint they shouted ‘Glory to Ukraine,’ to see if we shouted ‘Glory to the heroes’, of course, we knew that would end badly, ‘ she said, referring to a patriotic greeting among Ukrainians. became popular during the war.

“We still know the truth is on our side,” she said.

Michael Schwirtz reported from Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, and Michael Levenson from New York. Report contributed by Lara Jakes and Eric Schmitt from Washington, Myra Noveck from Jerusalem, Marc Santora from Krakow, Poland, Monika Proncczuk from Brussels and Matthew Mpoke Bigg from London.





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