In the embattled Ukrainian port of Mariupol, there were further attempts to bring trapped civilians to safety on Sunday. According to initial information, several dozen civilians were taken from the Azovstal steelworks in a convoy of buses. The United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) are also involved in the action, as an ICRC spokesman confirmed.
According to Russian information, around 40 people were able to leave the area around the besieged Azovstal steelworks on Saturday, as a Reuters photographer also confirmed. According to the Ukrainian side, there are still about a thousand civilians in the tunnel system there in appalling conditions.
Meanwhile, fighting in southern and eastern Ukraine continued. Russia’s military leadership said it used rockets to attack a military airport in the southern Ukrainian port city of Odessa. A runway was destroyed, and a hangar in which Ukraine had stored weapons supplied by the United States and Europe was also hit. Moscow had announced that it would also target arms deliveries from the West. However, Odessa Mayor Gennadey Trukhanov said it was the main airport, which was only completed last summer. According to Ukrainian information, grain silos in the Dnipro region were also hit and destroyed on Sunday, and people in a quarter of the city of Kharkiv were evacuated because of the severe attacks warned not to leave the shelters, even if there are no sirens.
A week before the day of victory over Nazi Germany, on which Russia probably wants to present current successes in the war against Ukraine, Russian troops are increasing their military pressure, especially in eastern Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a video speech that he was expecting massive attacks in the Donbass, for which Russia was currently assembling additional troops. Moscow had declared the conquest of the entire Donbass as a war goal.
However, the Ukraine also repeatedly reports its own military attacks, which could not be verified independently. These include shooting down two Russian fighter jets and several drones. Ukraine has also repeatedly attacked the Russian-occupied Snake Island in the Black Sea, an indication that Kyiv itself is now trying to put the Russian military under pressure again and again. It was initially not known on Sunday whether a burning military building in Belgorod, Russia, was also attacked from Ukraine. To Information from the Ukrainian General Staff has been used since the beginning of the war on February 24 killed 23,500 Russian soldiers and destroyed more than a thousand tanks. However, he did not provide any information about the number of his own victims. As a sign that the US is firmly on Ukraine’s side, Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the US House of Representatives, also traveled to Kyiv, where she met with President Zelensky.