Mariupol appears to be on the brink of falling to Russian forces today, after missing a deadline to surrender following seven weeks under siege.
Taking the battered Ukrainian city would be seen as a crucial strategic victory for Vladimir Putin’s invaders, particularly in the wake of a series of military setbacks and the loss of its flagship in the Black Sea.
But it could also put an end to peace talks, with Ukraine – which has said its troops will fight to the end – warning that the extermination of the remaining defenders of the city was a red line.
Around 2,500 fighters are said to be holding out at a steel plant with a warren of underground passageways, according to the Russian military.
They had been given a deadline to surrender and ‘keep their lives’, but Ukraine did not submit and the deadline has passed.
Mariupol has been shattered by relentless Russian attacks and there are fears that the atrocities committed there may be worse than in Bucha. Before and after images of the city show the devastation wreaked by Putin’s forces.
Russia’s defence ministry spokesman, Major General Igor Konashenkov, warned ahead of the surrender deadline: ‘All those who will continue resistance will be destroyed’.
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky said that if Russian forces kill Kyiv’s troops remaining to defend the city, then a fledgling negotiation process to end nearly two months of fighting would be ended.
‘The elimination of our troops, of our men (in Mariupol) will put an end to any negotiations,’ he told the Ukrainska Pravda news website.
‘We don’t negotiate neither our territories nor our people.’
Seizing Mariupol would free Russian forces to weaken and encircle Ukrainian forces in eastern Ukraine, where Russia has focused its war aims for now and is deploying personnel and equipment withdrawn from the north after a botched attempt to take Kyiv.
Ukrainian deputy defence minister Hanna Malyar described Mariupol as a ‘shield defending Ukraine’ as Russian troops prepare for a full-scale offensive in Donbas, the country’s eastern industrial heartland where Moscow-backed separatists already control some territory.
In a reminder that no part of Ukraine was immune until the war ends, Russian forces carried out new missile strikes on Sunday near Kyiv and elsewhere in an apparent effort to weaken Ukraine’s military capacity before the anticipated assault in the east.
After the humiliating loss of the flagship of its Black Sea Fleet, Russia’s military command vowed Friday to step up missile strikes on the capital.
The ongoing siege and relentless bombardment of Mariupol has come at a terrible cost, with officials estimating Russians had killed at least 21,000 people. Just 120,000 people remain in the city, out of a pre-war population of 450,000.
Ms Malyar, the deputy defence minister, said the Russians have continued to hit Mariupol with airstrikes and could be getting ready for an amphibious landing to beef up their ground forces.
Capturing the city would mark Russia’s first palpable success after two months of fighting and help reassure the Russian public amid the worsening economic situation from western sanctions.
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It would allow Russia to secure a land corridor to the Crimean Peninsula, which it annexed from Ukraine in 2014, and deprive Ukraine of a major port and prized industrial assets.
So far, tunnels at the sprawling Azovstal steel mill, which covers an area of more than 4.2 square miles, have allowed the defenders to hide and resist until they run out of ammunition.
In his nightly address to the nation, Mr Zelensky called on the west to send more heavy weapons immediately if there is any chance of saving the city, adding Russia ‘is deliberately trying to destroy everyone who is there’.
The President estimates that 2,500 to 3,000 Ukrainian troops have died in the war, and about 10,000 have been wounded. The office of Ukraine’s prosecutor general said Saturday that at least 200 children have been killed, and more than 360 wounded.
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