Europe 1 with AFP 08:00, April 22, 2022

The total fall of Mariupol, a large industrial port on the Sea of ​​Azov that has become a martyr city and a field of ruins after nearly two months of Russian bombardment and siege, would constitute an important victory for Moscow.

But according to kyiv, Ukrainian fighters continue to fiercely defend the huge Azovstal metallurgical complex. 

THE ESSENTIAL

The strategic port of Mariupol, which Moscow claims to have "liberated", is still resisting Russian forces, says kyiv, according to which Ukrainian fighters continue to fiercely defend the immense Azovstal metallurgical complex where civilians are also entrenched.

"There is not a single undamaged building in Mariupol. A literally burnt city," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Thursday in a speech to Portugal's parliament.

Information to remember:

  • More than 3,000 refugees in the Azovstal complex

  • Three civilian evacuation buses departed from Mariupol port

  • The United States announced $800 million in new military aid for Ukraine

"For more than a month, Russian troops besieged Mariupol (...) Hundreds of thousands of civilians were (stuck) there, without food, without water, without medicine. Under constant bombardment," he said. he recounts.

Thanks to the capture of Mariupol Moscow could create a land bridge linking the Crimea annexed in 2014 with the pro-Russian separatist areas in the Donbass region.

On Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russian forces had "liberated" Mariupol, ordering the remaining Ukrainian fighters to be besieged rather than storming the Azovstal industrial site where they are entrenched.

Volodymyr Zelensky did not declare defeat, assuring that the battle was still ongoing.

"They can only delay the inevitable - the moment when the invaders will have to leave our territory, in particular Mariupol, a city which continues to resist Russia, despite everything the occupiers say," he said in a video speech.

"Hold on tight!"

According to him, in addition to some 2,000 Ukrainian soldiers, "about a thousand civilians, women and children" and "hundreds of wounded" have taken refuge in the huge metallurgical complex with kilometers of underground galleries. 

Ukrainian fighters in Mariupol refuse to surrender, while efforts to evacuate civilians continue.

Three buses evacuating civilians from the port of Mariupol arrived in Zaporizhia, a large city in southeastern Ukraine, on Thursday, an AFP journalist noted.

"I don't want to hear any more shelling," said Tatiana Dorash, 34, who arrived with her six-year-old son Maxim, saying she just wanted a quiet night and "a bed to sleep in".

Ukrainian officials say they wanted to evacuate many more civilians from Mariupol, but accuse Russian forces of targeting a road used by people fleeing the fighting.

"We apologize to the residents of Mariupol who waited for the evacuation today without result," Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshuk said on Telegram.

"The shelling started near the collection point, which forced the (humanitarian) corridor to close. Dear people of Mariupol, please know that as long as we have at least one possibility, we will not give up trying to get you out of there ! Hold on tight !"

"Need Weapons"

In kyiv, the adviser to the Ukrainian president Oleksiy Arestovych nevertheless relativized the Russian offensive: "The immediate threat of losing Mariupol has dissipated".

According to him, Moscow does not have enough troops to encircle, and therefore besiege, the steelworks.

Recent satellite images published by the American company Maxar Technologies also show, according to the company, "the existence of a site of mass graves in the northwest of Manhush", a village 20 kilometers west of Mariupol .

In this village alone, "the occupants would have buried between 3 and 9,000 residents", said the town hall of Mariupol on Telegram.

"They are digging thirty-meter holes and bringing the bodies of our residents of Mariupol in trucks," said the city's mayor, Vadym Boychenko, during a press briefing broadcast on YouTube.

He estimated that Russian bombardments had claimed at least 20,000 lives in Mariupol since the siege began.

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Mr. Zelensky had earlier estimated, before the heads of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, the aid needed to compensate for the economic losses caused by the war at $7 billion a month, accusing Russia of "destroying all the objects in Ukraine which can serve as an economic base".

United States military aid

A call partially heard.

On Thursday, US President Joe Biden announced $800 million in new military aid for Ukraine.

The Pentagon said that this new tranche of aid included 72 Howitzer howitzers and their vehicles, 144,000 shells and 121 Phoenix Ghost killer drones.

On Thursday evening, Mr Biden called Vladimir Putin's "great ambitions" a "failure".

"Zelensky and his democratically elected government are still in power, and the Ukrainian armed forces accompanied by the valiant Ukrainian civilians have foiled the Russian conquest of their country," he wrote.

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This assertion was not enough to dispel the concerns of the Ukrainian president, who accused Russia of seeking to organize a fake independence referendum in the regions of Kherson and Zaporijjia which it occupies in the south of the country.

In a video message, Mr. Zelensky asked residents of the occupied areas not to provide any personal data, such as their passport numbers, that would be required of them by the Russian forces.

"It's not just to conduct a census. (...) It's not to give you humanitarian aid of any kind. It's actually to tamper with a so-called referendum on your land , if the order to organize this comedy comes from Moscow", warned the Ukrainian president.

Ukraine had already accused, at the beginning of March, Russia of seeking to stage a "referendum" in Kherson like the one which, in 2014, had sealed the annexation of Crimea by Russia, and which is considered illegal by kyiv and by Westerners.

Around the capital, makeshift graves discovered near a hospital in the devastated town of Borodianka have offered evidence to experts investigating war crimes charges against Russian troops.

More than 1,000 bodies of civilians in the streets, hands and feet tied

Authorities said nine civilian corpses, many of them shot, were exhumed from these graves.

Investigators collected more than 1,000 bodies of civilians from streets, courtyards or improvised graves around the Ukrainian capital, some of whom had their hands and feet tied or gunshot wounds to the back of their necks, officials said Thursday. responsible.

This investigation is part of the documentation of what Oleksandr Pavliuk, head of the Kyiv regional military administration, described as "atrocities" committed following the invasion of Russian troops, who by subsequently were forced to withdraw from the region.