International efforts to save Ukrainian civilians from the shattered remains of Mariupol intensified Saturday, as the city’s mayor said that those who took shelter in the now-ruined Azovstal steel plant are “on the borderline between life and death.”
“They are praying for a rescue,” Mayor Vadym Boychenko told the BBC, estimating that about 600 of the 1,000 women and children still at the plant have been injured. “It’s difficult to say how many days or hours we have to save their lives.”
New satellite images show flattened buildings within the plant, where Ukrainian forces in Mariupol have made their last stand. Large holes have been punched in the roofs of any structure left standing, according to Maxar Technologies.
The Red Cross and United Nations were negotiating in hopes of securing safe passage for the plant’s besieged non-combatants, Boychenko said.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian government warned that the 100,000 civilians still living in Mariupol’s rubble now face mortal danger from a new threat: disease.
An aerial view shows a crater and a destroyed home in the village of Yatskivka, eastern Ukraine.Photo by RONALDO SCHEMIDT/AFP via Getty Images
“Powerful and deadly epidemics could soon break out in the city – due to the lack of centralized water supply and sanitation, the decomposition of thousands of corpses under the rubble, and a catastrophic shortage of water & food,” the Ukrainian Parliament posted on Twitter.
The “medieval living conditions” imposed by the Russian invaders will soon cause deadly outbreaks of cholera, dysentery, and other infections, the Ukrainians said.
Two of the three buses sent to the town of Popasna to save residents from continuing Russian attack have gone missing, the BBC reported, after volunteer drivers came under fire along the route Only one bus, carrying 31 civilians, managed to make it to safety in the town of Bakhmut, Ukrainian military officials said.
Beyond Mariupol, Ukrainian authorities raised the specter of starvation for those who remain in Russian-held areas – because occupying forces are stealing massive stores of grain.
“Today, there are confirmed facts that several hundred thousand tons of grain in total were taken out of the Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Donetsk and Luhansk regions,” Taras Vysotsky, Ukraine’s deputy agriculture minister, said.
A destroyed house is pictured in the village of Yatskivka, eastern Ukraine.Photo by RONALDO SCHEMIDT/AFP via Getty Images
In Kyiv, President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke with the recently re-elected President Emmanuel Macron of France, who pledged “to work actively during his second term of office to restore the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine,” according to a statement from the Elysee Palace.
Macron promised that French shipments of military supplies and humanitarian aid “will continue to grow” as the “unbearable” attacks on Mariupol and other Ukrainian cities grind on.
Meanwhile, occupied areas of Ukraine are showing increasing signs of overt Russification, as Russian forces strive to erase all vestiges of Ukrainian identity.
A supermarket in Melitopol announced that it was reopening Saturday under new – Russian – management, CNN reported, while a Twitter post from the town of Tokmak showed a man in a cherry picker wrenching the Ukrainian coat of arms off the front of the mayor’s office. In Nova Kakhovka and other towns, statues of Vladimir Lenin – founder of the Soviet Union – are being restored to places of honor.
“The Russians are trying to annihilate the Ukrainians,” Olena Zelenska, Ukraine’s first lady, told the Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita. “And it doesn’t matter what they say, because their words do not match their deeds.”
Russian forces spent Saturday pounding Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, but have so far failed to capture several strategic locations, Ukraine’s military said.
The Russians have failed to capture Lyman in Donetsk and Sievierodonetsk and Popasna in Luhansk. “Not succeeding – the fighting continues,” the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces missive said.
The Russians had been bombarding the region “but they cannot get through our defense,” said Serhiy Gaidai, the governor of Luhansk said. Two schools and 20 homes had been leveled during the assault, he added.
Moscow military sources said 389 Ukrainian targets had been hit overnight by Russian artillery, killing up to 120 Ukrainian soldiers and taking out four tanks and six armored vehicles.
In Odessa, a Russian attack on the local airport southwest of the city rendered its runway inoperable, Ukraine’s southern defense forces said.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that peace talks with Ukraine remained ongoing and that the lifting of western sanctions on Russia were part of that discussion. He also accused the west of undercutting their own efforts toward peace by continuing to send advanced military hardware to Ukraine.
“Progress has not been easy,” he told Chinese state television — blaming “the bellicose rhetoric and inflammatory actions of Western supporters of the Kyiv regime” for the stalemate.
Lavrov said his country had evacuated over 1 million people from Ukraine since the war began, but offered no evidence to support his claim.
With Post Wires