Russia: 1,000 Ukrainian marines have surrendered

LVIV • More than 1,000 Ukrainian marines have surrendered in the port of Mariupol, Russia's defence ministry said yesterday of its main strategic target in the eastern Donbass region, which has been reduced to ruins but is not yet under Russian control.

If Russia takes the Azovstal industrial district, where the marines have been holed up, it would be in full control of Mariupol, Ukraine's main Sea of Azov port, allowing Russia to reinforce a land corridor between separatist-held eastern areas and the Crimea region it seized and annexed in 2014.

Surrounded and bombarded by Russian troops for weeks and the focus of some of the fiercest fighting of the war, Mariupol would be the first major city to fall since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb 24.

More than 20,000 have been killed in Russia's siege of Mariupol, Mayor Vadym Boychenko said on Ukrainian television, a threefold increase from the last reported figure on March 21.

Ukraine has accused Russia of blocking aid convoys to tens of thousands of civilians it says are still trapped in the city.

Russia's defence ministry said that 1,026 marines had surrendered, including 162 officers.

"In the town of Mariupol, near the Ilyich Iron and Steel Works, as a result of successful offensives by Russian armed forces and Donetsk People's Republic militia units, 1,026 Ukrainian soldiers of the 36th Marine Brigade voluntarily laid down arms and surrendered," the ministry said in a statement.

Ukraine said Russia was proceeding with attacks on Azovstal and the port, but a defence ministry spokesman said he had no information about any surrender.

Russian television showed pictures of what it said were marines giving themselves up at Illich Iron and Steel Works in Mariupol on Tuesday, many of them wounded.

The presidents of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were in Kyiv yesterday to meet Mr Zelensky, the Polish leader's office said. Estonian President Alar Karis had earlier tweeted they were offering political support and military aid.

The four join a growing number of European politicians who have visited the Ukrainian capital since Russian forces were driven away from the country's north.

After US President Joe Biden said for the first time Moscow's invasion of Ukraine amounted to genocide, an initial report by a mission of experts set up by Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) documented a "catalogue of inhumanity" by Russian troops in Ukraine, the US ambassador to the OSCE said yesterday.

"This includes evidence of direct targeting of civilians, attacks on medical facilities, rape, executions, looting and forced deportation of civilians to Russia," Mr Michael Carpenter said in a statement.

Russia has denied targeting civilians and has said Ukrainian and Western allegations of war crimes are fabricated.

Many towns Russia has retreated from in northern Ukraine were littered with the bodies of civilians.

Interfax Ukraine news agency yesterday quoted the Kyiv district police chief as saying 720 bodies had been found in the region around the capital, with more than 200 people missing.

The General Headquarters of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said Russian forces were maintaining attacks on civilian infrastructure in the north-eastern Kharkiv region and the central Zaporizhzhia.

At least seven people were killed and 22 wounded in Kharkiv over the past 24 hours, Governor Oleh Synegubov said. A boy aged two years was among those killed, he said in an online post. He said Ukrainian forces shot down two Russian planes which were attacking towns in Kharkiv.

REUTERS