Russian force strikes heart of reeling city

Fighting shuts steel plant as fall of Mariupol feared

People gather in a basement Saturday during an air raid in Lviv, Ukraine. Lviv has been a refuge since the war began nearly a month ago, hosting hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians who fled the fighting in other areas of the country. More photos at arkansasonline.com/ukraineimages/.
(AP/Bernat Armangue)
People gather in a basement Saturday during an air raid in Lviv, Ukraine. Lviv has been a refuge since the war began nearly a month ago, hosting hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians who fled the fighting in other areas of the country. More photos at arkansasonline.com/ukraineimages/. (AP/Bernat Armangue)


LVIV, Ukraine -- Russian forces pushed deeper into Ukraine's besieged and battered port city of Mariupol on Saturday, where heavy fighting shut down a major steel plant and local authorities pleaded for more Western help.

The fall of Mariupol, the scene of some of the war's worst suffering, would mark a major battlefield advance for the Russians, who have stalled outside major cities more than three weeks into the biggest land invasion in Europe since World War II.

Details also began to emerge Saturday about a rocket attack that killed as many as 40 marines in the southern city of Mykolaiv the previous day, according to a Ukrainian military official who spoke to The New York Times.

Russian forces have already cut Mariupol off from the Sea of Azov, and its fall would link Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, to eastern territories controlled by Moscow-backed separatists.

Ukrainian and Russian forces battled over the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, Vadym Denysenko, adviser to Ukraine's interior minister, said Saturday. "One of the largest metallurgical plants in Europe is actually being destroyed," Denysenko said.

The Mariupol City Council claimed hours later that Russian soldiers had forcibly relocated several thousand city residents, mostly women and children, to Russia. It didn't say where in Russia, and reporters could not immediately confirm the claim.

Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to Ukraine's president, said the nearest forces that could assist Mariupol were already struggling against "the overwhelming force of the enemy" or were at least 60 miles away.

"There is currently no military solution to Mariupol," he said late Friday. "That is not only my opinion, that is the opinion of the military."

In Mykolaiv, rescuers searched the rubble of the marine barracks that was destroyed in an apparent missile attack Friday. The region's governor said the marines were asleep when the attack happened.

It isn't clear how many marines were inside at the time, and rescuers were still searching the rubble for survivors the following day. But a senior Ukrainian military official, who spoke to The New York Times on condition of anonymity, estimated that as many as 40 marines were killed, which would make it one of the deadliest known attacks on Ukrainian forces during the war.

Ukrainian President Volodomir Zelenskyy appeared in a video early Saturday that was shot on the streets of the capital, Kyiv.

Zelenskyy said Russia is trying to starve Ukraine's cities into submission but warned that continuing the invasion would exact a heavy toll on Moscow. He also repeated his call for Russian President Vladimir Putin to meet with him to prevent more bloodshed.

"The time has come to restore territorial integrity and justice for Ukraine. Otherwise, Russia's costs will be so high that you will not be able to rise again for several generations," he said.

Putin appeared Friday at a rally in Moscow where he lavished praise on his country's military.

"We have not had unity like this for a long time," Putin told the cheering crowd.

The rally took place as Russia has faced heavier-than-expected losses on the battlefield and at home, where police have detained thousands of anti-war protesters.

Estimates of Russian deaths vary widely, but conservative figures are in the low thousands. Russia had 64 deaths in five days of fighting during its 2008 war with Georgia. It lost about 15,000 in Afghanistan over 10 years, and more than 11,000 in years of fighting in Chechnya.

The Russian military said Saturday that it used its latest hypersonic missile for the first time in combat. Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said Kinzhal missiles destroyed an underground warehouse storing Ukrainian missiles and aviation ammunition in the western region of Ivano-Frankivsk.

Russia has said the Kinzhal, carried by MiG-31 fighter jets, has a range of about 1,250 miles and flies at 10 times the speed of sound.

Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said the U.S. couldn't confirm the use of a hypersonic missile.

U.N. agencies have confirmed more than 847 civilian deaths since the war began, though they say the actual toll is likely much higher. The U.N. says more than 3.3 million people have fled Ukraine as refugees.

The northwestern Kyiv suburbs of Bucha, Hostomel, Irpin and Moshchun were under fire Saturday, the Kyiv regional administration reported. It said Slavutich, about 103 miles north of the capital, was "completely isolated."

Evacuations from Mariupol and other besieged cities proceeded along eight of 10 humanitarian corridors, Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said, and a total of 6,623 people were evacuated.

Vereshchuk said planned humanitarian aid for the southern city of Kherson, which Russia seized early in the war, could not be delivered because the trucks were stopped along the way by Russian troops.

Ukraine and Russia have held several rounds of negotiations aimed at ending the conflict but remain divided over several issues, with Moscow pressing for its neighbor's demilitarization and Kyiv demanding security guarantees.

Putin spoke by phone Saturday for a second time this week with Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel. The Kremlin said Putin "outlined fundamental assessments of the course of the talks between Russian and Ukrainian representatives," while Bettel informed him about "contacts with the leadership of Ukraine and other countries."

British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss accused Putin of using the talks as a "smoke screen" while his forces regroup. "We don't see any serious withdrawal of Russian troops or any serious proposals on the table," she told the Times of London.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, during a Saturday visit to NATO ally Bulgaria, said the Russian invasion had "stalled on a number of fronts" but the U.S. had not yet seen signs that Putin was deploying additional forces.

Around Ukraine, hospitals, schools and buildings where people sought safety have been attacked.

At least 130 people survived the Wednesday bombing of a Mariupol theater that was being used a shelter, but another 1,300 were believed to be still inside, Ludmyla Denisova, the Ukrainian Parliament's human rights commissioner, said Friday.

"We pray that they will all be alive, but so far there is no information about them," Denisova said.

Zelenskyy said more than 9,000 people were able to leave Mariupol on Friday along a route leading about 141 miles to the city of Zaporizhzhia -- which is also under attack.

Southern Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia region announced a 38-hour curfew after two missile strikes killed nine people Friday.

Russian forces have fired on eight cities and villages in the eastern Donetsk region in the past 24 hours, including Mariupol, Ukraine's national police said Saturday. Dozens of civilians were killed or wounded, and at least 37 residential buildings and facilities were damaged, including a school, a museum and a shopping center.

UNEXPLODED SHELLS

Ukrainian Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky says it will take years to defuse the unexploded ordnance once the Russian invasion is over.

Monastyrsky told reporters in an interview on Friday that the country will need Western assistance to carry out the undertaking after the war.

"A huge number of shells and mines have been fired at Ukraine, and a large part haven't exploded. They remain under the rubble and pose a real threat," Monastyrsky said in Kyiv. "It will take years, not months, to defuse them."

In addition to the unexploded Russian ordnance, Ukrainian troops have planted land mines at bridges, airports and other key locations to prevent the Russians from using them.

"We won't be able to remove the mines from all that territory, so I asked our international partners and colleagues from the European Union and the United States to prepare groups of experts to demine the areas of combat and facilities that came under shelling," Monastyrsky told reporters.

He noted that his ministry's demining equipment was left in the besieged city of Mariupol, which has been subjected to shelling for much of the war.

"We lost 200 pieces of equipment there," Monastyrsky said.

One of the biggest challenges the Interior Ministry faces is fighting the fires caused by the relentless Russian shelling and airstrikes, Monastyrsky said. The country's emergency service, which the ministry oversees, is facing shortages of personnel and equipment, he said.

A firefighter was killed Thursday during the Russian shelling of Ukraine's second-largest city, Kharkiv, while working to extinguish a blaze at a market that was caused by a previous attack.

Monastyrsky added that the emergency service's facilities in Kharkiv and Mariupol were destroyed in the Russian barrage.

Monastyrsky stressed that Ukrainian emergency responders urgently need more specialized vehicles and protective equipment.

"The coming days will exacerbate a humanitarian catastrophe in critical areas," he said. "I must say that casualties among civilians exceed our military losses by several times."

The Interior zMinistry has been busy trying to counter groups of Russian saboteurs that inundated the country to target bridges, gas pipelines and other infrastructure facilities, Monastyrsky said, adding that dozens of such groups have operated in Ukraine.

"We realize that sabotage is a key tool in the war," he said, adding that Ukrainian forces have managed to spot Russian saboteurs by tracking their Russian cellphones. "We reacted immediately ... by searching locations where these phones were detected and acted against those groups."

RISK OF ESCALATION

Military commanders from NATO countries are working the phones with their Russian counterparts to make sure the U.S. and its allies don't get dragged into a war over a misunderstanding on the Ukrainian border.

At the weekend, Russia hit a military facility in the region about 22 miles from Poland and recently a reconnaissance drone darted through several eastern European countries before crashing in the Croatian capital, Zagreb.

Western officials are concerned that a more serious episode, if say a Russian missile struck NATO territory, could trigger an escalation and bring them into conflict with Russia.

Military planners have worked to avoid a clash between the world's two biggest nuclear powers since the Soviet Union acquired its first atom bomb at the start of the Cold War.

Putin placed his nuclear forces on high alert at the end of February and has warned NATO not to interfere in Ukraine. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said repeatedly that the U.S. is ready to defend any incursion by Russia into NATO territory.

But officials say they don't want to stumble into a conflict just because someone made a mistake.

"With more military activities in the air, with drones, with planes, there is a risk," NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters this week ahead of a summit of alliance defense ministers. "We have to make every effort to prevent such incidents and accidents and, if they happen, to make sure that they don't spiral out of control."

Russian forces so far haven't sought to provoke or engage allied forces, NATO officials say, even as they continue to bomb Ukrainian cities and attempt to regroup from initial failures and advances slowed by Ukrainian troops.

Still, convoys of weapons that the U.S. and its NATO allies ship to Ukraine are "legitimate targets" for Russia's military, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said March 12 on state television, calling the deliveries a "dangerous move."

That followed an earlier warning by Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko of the dangers of confrontation between Russia and NATO. "Risks do emerge," Grushko told Rossiya 24 TV on March 2. "There are no guarantees there'll be no incidents and no guarantees that these incidents couldn't escalate in an absolutely unwanted direction," he said.

Stoltenberg said allies have stepped up monitoring of their airspace and borders as a result of the increased risk.

Most of the countries neighboring Ukraine are members of NATO, which binds nations to defend one another in the event of an attack. One miscalculation from the Russian side could drag all 30 allies into the conflict, and most significantly the U.S.

The conversations between military commanders from the two sides aren't easy, according to a senior European diplomat. But officials do exchange information about troop movements and other plans, the diplomat said.

BUSH, CLINTON VISIT CHURCH

In a display of solidarity with Ukraine, former Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton earlier this week left bouquets of sunflowers, the war-torn nation's national flower, at an iconic church in Chicago's Ukrainian Village during an unannounced visit.

Both former presidents, who have been outspoken in opposing Russia's invasion of Ukraine, used social media late Friday to post videos of their joint visit to the golden-domed Sts. Volodymyr and Olha Ukrainian Catholic Church.

The men, both 75, wore yellow ribbons on their suit lapels as they approached the church, carrying the bouquets of yellow sunflowers tied in a blue ribbon. They left the flowers at a stone cross outside the church.

"America stands in solidarity with the people of Ukraine as they fight for their freedom and their future," Bush, a former Republican president, said on Twitter.

Clinton, a former Democratic president, posted the video to his Twitter page, writing, "America stands united with the people of Ukraine in their fight for freedom and against oppression."

The video said Clinton and Bush "worked to support Ukraine's democratic institutions" after the U.S. began diplomatic relations with the country in 1991 following the fall of the Soviet Union.

In a Facebook post, the church displayed the video and thanked the former presidents for their visit.

Both Bush and Clinton have criticized the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

In a statement following Russia's invasion, Bush called it "unprovoked and unjustified" and said it constitutes "the gravest security crisis on the European continent since World War II."

Clinton warned Putin that "the world will hold Russia, and Russia alone, accountable, both economically and politically."

Information for this article was contributed by Nebi Qena, Cara Anna, Yuras Karmanau and staff members of The Associated Press; Natalia Drozdiak of Bloomberg News (TNS); and Rick Pearson of Chicago Tribune (TNS).

  photo  Medical staff rest in a basement used as a bomb shelter at the Ohmatdyt children's hospital in Kyiv, Ukraine, Saturday, March 19, 2022. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)
 
 
  photo  Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is displayed on a screen during a demonstration against the Russian invasion of Ukraine in front of the Swiss parliament building in Bern, Switzerland, Saturday, March 19, 2022. (Peter Klaunzer/Keystone via AP)
 
 
  photo  People gather in a basement, used as a bomb shelter, during an air raid in Lviv, Western Ukraine, Saturday, March 19, 2022. Lviv has been a refuge since the war began nearly a month ago, the last outpost before Poland and host to hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians streaming through or staying on. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)
 
 
  photo  People gather in a vantage point that overlooks the city of Lviv, western Ukraine, Saturday, March 19, 2022. Lviv has been a refuge since the war began nearly a month ago, the last outpost before Poland and host to hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians streaming through or staying on. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)
 
 
  photo  A hospital worker walks into a basement used as a bomb shelter at the Ohmatdyt children's hospital in Kyiv, Ukraine, Saturday, March 19, 2022. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)
 
 
  photo  Ukrainian Natalia Tanchynets works on a patriotic-themed tattoo at her workshop in Lviv, Western Ukraine, Saturday, March 19, 2022. Fighting raged on multiple fronts in Ukraine more than three weeks after Russia's Feb. 24 invasion. U.N. bodies have confirmed more than 800 civilian deaths since the war began but say the real toll is considerably higher. The U.N. says more than 3.3 million people have fled Ukraine as refugees. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)
 
 
  photo  Ukrainian civilians receive weapons training in Lviv, Western Ukraine, Saturday, March 19, 2022. Fighting raged on multiple fronts in Ukraine more than three weeks after Russia's Feb. 24 invasion. U.N. bodies have confirmed more than 800 civilian deaths since the war began but say the real toll is considerably higher. The U.N. says more than 3.3 million people have fled Ukraine as refugees. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)
 
 
  photo  Refugees fleeing the war from neighbouring Ukraine arrive at the border crossing in Palanca, Moldova, Saturday, March 19, 2022. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits)
 
 
  photo  Nanny Svitlana Stetsiuk plays with one of the babies in the nursery in Kyiv, Ukraine, Saturday, March 19, 2022. Nineteen surrogated babies were born to surrogate mothers, with their biological parents still outside the country due to the war against Russia. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
 
 


  photo  People attend a religious service Saturday at St. Volodymyr’s Cathedral in Kyiv, Ukraine. (AP/Vadim Ghirda)
 
 


  photo  This satellite image provided by Maxar Technologies shows the aftermath of an airstrike on a Mariupol, Ukraine, theater and the area around it. (AP/Maxar Technologies)
 
 


  photo  Medical staff rest Saturday in a basement used as a bomb shelter at the Ohmatdyt children’s hospital in Kyiv, Ukraine. (AP/Felipe Dana)
 
 


  photo  The Arch of Peace in Milan, Italy, is illuminated Saturday in the colors of the Ukrainian flag during a protest against the Russian invasion. (AP/LaPresse/Yunus Boiocchi)
 
 


  photo  A child holds a large Ukrainian flag during a protest Saturday in Bucharest, Romania, against Russia’s war in Ukraine. (AP/Andreea Alexandru)
 
 



 Gallery: Crisis in Ukraine



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