Dhe last Ukrainian armed forces in Mariupol assume that the port city will be captured by the Russian attackers in the coming hours. “Today will probably be the last battle as ammunition is running low,” the 36th Naval Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said on Facebook on Monday. According to their own statements, the army leadership in Kyiv is also expecting a major offensive by the Russian armed forces in the east of the country “very soon”.
The Ukrainian soldiers were “pushed back” and “surrounded” by the Russian army, the Mariupol brigade said. “All infantrymen have been killed and the firefights are now taking over artillerymen, anti-aircraft gunners, radio operators, drivers and cooks. Even the orchestra.” Half of the remaining soldiers were wounded.
“No one wants to communicate with us anymore because we’ve been written off,” the soldiers continued. Conquest will mean “death for some of us and imprisonment for the rest.”
Source: Infographic WORLD
Meanwhile, pro-Russian separatists reportedly seized the city’s port, according to reports from Russian news agencies. “The port of Mariupol is under our control,” RIA Novosti news agency quoted Donetsk separatist leader Denis Puschilin as saying on Monday.
The strategically important port city of Mariupol lies between the Crimean Peninsula, annexed by Russia, and the pro-Russian separatist areas in the Donbass. It has been besieged since the first days of the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine and is now largely destroyed.
Slovakia cannot confirm destruction of arms shipment by Russia
According to its foreign minister, the Slovak government has no information that its anti-aircraft missile system, recently delivered to Ukraine, was destroyed by the Russian military. Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov said earlier that ship-launched missiles destroyed four S-300 anti-aircraft guns on the southern outskirts of the city of Dnipro. About 25 Ukrainian soldiers were also killed in the attack on Sunday.
Konashenkov said on Monday that Ukraine received the air defense systems from a European country. He did not say what it was about. Slovakia announced last week that it had handed over a Soviet-made S-300 system to Ukraine.
When asked in Brussels, Slovakian Foreign Minister Ivan Korcok said he had no evidence that his country’s arms supply had been destroyed.
British military intelligence warns against use of phosphorus ammunition
According to the Ministry of Defense in London, the British military intelligence service warns that Russia could also use phosphorus munitions in its attacks on the southeastern Ukrainian port of Mariupol. The possibility of this has increased, since Russia has already used such ammunition in the Donetsk region.
Meanwhile, the shelling in Donetsk and the neighboring Luhansk region continued. Ukrainian troops repelled several attacks, destroying Russian tanks, vehicles and artillery equipment in the process, an intelligence update released Monday morning said. The shelling by Russian troops in the two regions in eastern Ukraine continues.
Russia continues to rely on unguided bombs, the ministry said. This reduces the ability to target targets accurately when attacking. In return, the risk of civilian casualties increases significantly, it said.
“The day will come when Russia will have to admit the truth”
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy harshly criticized Russia’s policy of denial of facts in a video speech on Monday night. Zelenskyy said in his speech that while Ukraine is trying to bring to justice “every bastard who came into our country flying the Russian flag and killed our people,” Russia is trying to evade responsibility.
“What is Russia doing? What are his officials, his propagandists and the ordinary people doing who just repeat what they heard on TV,” Zelenskyy referred to the selective truth-seeking of the state-controlled Russian media. “They justify themselves and deny. You deny any responsibility. You lie,” Zelenskyy continued, talking himself increasingly into a rage.
“And they have already strayed so far from reality that they accuse us of what the Russian army actually did,” the Ukrainian president criticized the Russian leadership’s attempts to massacre Bucha and other suburbs of Kyiv, where hundreds were killed by civilians to blame on the Ukrainian side.
According to Selenskyj, the background is that Moscow does not have the courage to admit its misguided policy in relation to its neighbors. “They are afraid to admit that for decades they have taken wrong positions and spent colossal resources to support human zeros they wanted to build as future heroes of the Ukrainian-Russian friendship,” Zelenskyy said.
Moscow’s attempt to build up its own people in Ukraine did not work. Because these people “were only trained in stuffing money from Russia into their own pockets”. And to cover up these mistakes, new mistakes were made. But in doing so, Russia deprived itself of all political instruments and finally started this war.
Graves of Ukrainian soldiers in a cemetery in the city of Chernihiv
Source: Getty Images/Anastasia Vlasova
In addition, Russia is trying to shift the blame for everything onto Ukraine. “They seized Crimea, we are supposedly to blame for that,” said Zelenskyy. “They have destroyed every normal life in Donbass, we are allegedly to blame for that. They’ve been killing people in our country for eight years, they say it’s our fault.”
This also applies to the destruction of the strongest economic region in Eastern Europe and the destruction of the lives of millions of people. “And finally they started a large-scale war against us, and again we are to blame.” And all this out of “sheer cowardice,” Zelenskyy summed up.
“And when cowardice increases, it turns into a catastrophe,” said the head of state. “When people lack the courage to admit mistakes, to apologize, to adapt to reality, they turn into monsters,” he said, referring to the leadership in the Kremlin. “And if the world ignores this, the monsters decide that the world must adapt to them.” And further: “The day will come when Russia has to admit the truth.”
Ukraine announces nine escape corridors in the east
According to the government, nine escape corridors were set up on Monday for the civilian population in embattled cities in eastern Ukraine. From the port city of Mariupol in the south, which was particularly hard hit by Russian attacks, a path for private vehicles is to lead in the direction of the city of Zaporizhia, as Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Wereshchuk announced on Telegram.
Escape routes for private cars should also be set up from the city of Berdyansk and two other places in the region. Five corridors led to the city of Bakhmut from embattled areas in the Luhansk region, Vereshchuk wrote. The routes are announced every day. According to Wereschtschuk, around 2,800 civilians were able to flee the contested regions on Sunday.
Source: WELT/Markus Wüste infographic
According to Ukraine, 2,824 people were brought to safety through humanitarian corridors from cities in the country on Sunday. Among them were 213 residents of the city of Mariupol, which was besieged by Russian troops, said Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk.
However, many remaining residents of eastern Ukraine are afraid to head west after the attack on the Kramatorsk railway station, Ukrainian Luhansk region governor Serhiy Gajday wrote on Facebook. According to new information from the Ukrainian authorities, a total of 57 people were killed in the rocket attack on Friday.
“Sometimes we beg them to come out of hiding because we know what’s coming next,” Gajdaj said of the authorities’ evacuation efforts. He warned that Russian forces “will destroy everything that stands in their way”.
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