Hours before and without giving so many details, the authorities of Donetsk, a region in the east of Ukraine which Russia recognized as a republic before launching the offensive, assured that some 50 people were evacuated from inside the steel plant.
“Today, May 7, 50 people were evacuated from the Azovstal territory,” they reported on Telegram, as quoted by the Sputnik news agency.
It is estimated that more than 100 people, along with Ukrainian resistance fighters, are still trapped in underground shelters in the huge industrial complex, where food and water are running out and medical care is minimal.
The Kremlin had announced a three-day truce starting Thursday and ending today at 6:00 p.m. in Moscow (12:00 p.m. in Argentina), but the Ukrainian military denounces that Moscow troops violated the agreement.
This morning, the Ukrainian General Staff stated that the Russian forces had continued with their offensive in this large industrial complex, despite the unilaterally declared truce.
So far, some 500 civilians have been evacuated from Azovstal thanks to humanitarian corridors organized by the UN and the Red Cross.
The taking of Mariupol has significant symbolic value, but also strategic value, since it would allow Moscow to take a crucial step in its plans to unite the annexed Crimean peninsula in the south with the separatist regions of the Ukrainian east.
In other areas of the country, Ukraine today claimed to have sunk a Russian ship on Snake Island in the Black Sea, something that was not confirmed by Moscow, whose aviation claimed to have destroyed an arsenal of weapons supplied to kyiv by the United States and Europe. .
The Ukrainian navy said on Facebook that a drone “hit a Serna landing ship and two surface-to-air missile systems,” without specifying the date, the AFP news agency reported.
“The traditional parade of the Russian fleet on May 9 this year will be held near the island of Serpents, at the bottom of the sea,” the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense wrote on Twitter.
In videos released by the Ukrainian army you can see a ship hit by an explosion and later on fire.
Meanwhile, in southern Ukraine, authorities reported successive Russian missile attacks around the city of Odessa.
According to a Ukrainian spokesman quoted by the Ukrinform portal, four cruise missiles fell on the city located by the Black Sea.
In the north of the country, meanwhile, a border soldier was injured in two air strikes in the Sumy region, 30 kilometers from the Russian border.
The Ukrainian General Staff today reported intense fighting in different parts of the Donbass region, in the east of the country and where the pro-Russian separatist groups are concentrated, and even spoke of a counteroffensive in the Kharkov regions, where the second largest city is located. largest in the country, and Izium.
Russia, for its part, reported that its planes reached a large concentration of weapons supplied to the Ukrainian military by the United States and European countries.
“A large concentration of military equipment supplied by the United States and European countries was destroyed in the area of the Bogodukhov railway station in Kharkov province,” Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said.
He added that the bombardment by Russian planes and helicopters also reached “up to 280 nationalists” and disabled “48 units of weapons and military equipment.”
On the borders of Ukraine, the authorities of the pro-Russian Moldovan separatist region of Transnistria reported today that four explosions occurred on Friday night without causing any casualties.
Transnistria, a Russian-backed breakaway region, broke away from Moldova after a brief war in 1992. Since then, Russia has deployed some 1,500 troops there.
Fears of the conflict in Ukraine spreading to Transnistria have increased after a Russian general claimed that the Kremlin’s offensive in Ukraine seeks to establish a corridor to this pro-Russian breakaway region.
In Moscow, meanwhile, some 11,000 soldiers participated in the Red Square in the general rehearsal of the parade that will take place on Monday for Victory Day, in which the victory over Nazi Germany in World War II is remembered and that this year it is marked by a new symbolism in the face of the military offensive launched on Ukraine.
On this occasion, foreign intelligence services speculated that Russia could make this date coincide with some kind of milestone related to Ukraine.
The Kremlin has ruled out that President Vladimir Putin will formally declare war on Ukraine on Monday (he currently defines the offensive as a “special operation”), which would allow him to recruit reservists to join the deployment in the neighboring country.
Russia also denied that the Victory Day parade would be replicated in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, to give symbolic value to the eventual seizure of the strategic port.
In recent years, Putin has used the May 9 parade to show off the might of his army and unveil new weapons.
The president is also expected to make a speech, this time addressing Western leaders who support Ukraine.
Source: Ambito
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