SVIATOHIRSK, Ukraine — Russia claimed victory over the battered southern Ukrainian port of Mariupol on Thursday, with President Vladimir Putin saying he had ordered his forces not to attack the city’s last holdouts sheltering in a vast steelworks but to blockade the compound so tightly that “not even a fly comes through.”
Ukraine’s government rejected the Russian assertion of a complete takeover of the once-thriving coastal city, which has been nearly wiped out in the course of nonstop attack. But Putin’s announcement that troops would not storm the sprawling Azovstal steel plant — where Ukrainian forces and civilians are holed up — was at once a sign of Russian confidence in its grip on Mariupol and of the fierce resistance of local defenders who have refused the enemy’s demands to surrender.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told a French television station Thursday that “local residents, children, the elderly and the military are blocked in the city of Mariupol.”
“It is not more like a war, but a terrorist operation by Russia against Mariupol and the people of this city,” he said.
Speaking Thursday at the White House, President Joe Biden, who announced an additional $800 million in defense aid to Ukraine, said it was “questionable” whether Putin controlled the city.
“There is no evidence yet that Mariupol has completely fallen,” said Biden, who predicted that the Russian offensive was “going to be limited in terms of geography but not limited in terms of brutality.”
Control of Mariupol, on the Sea of Azov, has been among Russia’s key strategic goals since it launched its war on Ukraine exactly eight weeks ago. The former metropolis of nearly half a million people — now a sea of rubble with three-fourths of its population displaced or dead — would allow Russia to create a land corridor connecting Russian-controlled parts of eastern Ukraine to Crimea, the peninsula Moscow illegally seized in 2014 in a foreshadowing of the present conflict.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Thursday that Mariupol had been “liberated,” a phrase Moscow has used in its attempt to portray its invasion as a humanitarian mission to save Ukraine from “neo-Nazis.” In reality, the war has left thousands of civilians dead, created more than 5 million refugees and rallied international powers in support of Ukraine, a democracy led by a Jewish president.
Ukrainian officials, who all but admitted that Mariupol had fallen, said Thursday that there would be additional attempts to evacuate civilians from the region. They also said they wanted to negotiate the status of the city.
Speaking on the messaging app Telegram, Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said that “we demand from the Russians an urgent humanitarian corridor from the Mariupol plant Azovstal. There are now about 1,000 civilians and 500 wounded soldiers. They all need to be removed from Azovstal today.”
Separately, a senior Ukrainian official said he was prepared to travel to Mariupol for new negotiations “without any conditions” after several previous rounds of talks failed to produce a cease-fire.
“We’re ready to to hold a ‘special round of negotiations’ right in Mariupol,” said presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak. “One on one. Two on two. To save our guys, Azov, military, children, the living and the wounded.”
The plea came as Zelenskyy received the prime ministers of Spain and Denmark in Kyiv, the latest in a series of European leaders to travel to the Ukrainian capital to express their support. After the meeting, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen pledged to send more weapons to Ukrainian fighters.
“We have all worldwide seen the reports and images of the horrible crimes committed by Russia in Ukraine, but today we have seen it with our own eyes, and it is heartbreaking,” Frederiksen said.
In an overnight video address, Zelenskyy urged his compatriots to remain vigilant. Russians, he said, were not “abandoning their attempts to score at least some victory by launching a new, large-scale offensive.”
After largely giving up on trying to capture Kyiv, Moscow shifted much of its bombardment and troops to eastern Ukraine earlier this month. Putin appears eager to be able to trumpet some major battlefield victories before the symbolically important date of May 9, when Russia annually celebrates its victory over Nazi Germany in World War II.
According to Russia’s defense ministry, its forces struck 1,001 targets overnight with missiles and shelling. Ukraine did not confirm the number, but regional leaders reported several attacks, including intense bombing in the second-largest city of Kharkiv, which sits near the Russian border in the northeast.
Kharkiv Mayor Igor Terekhov said Russia was “furiously” bombing overnight, hitting markets and residences.
“The situation is stressful,” said Terekhov, who described the city as “tense but under control.” He said about a third of the city’s prewar population of 2 million had fled since March.
The war on Ukraine, which has uprooted more than 12 million people, has generated a massive outpouring of global support, including billions of dollars in military assistance and multiple rounds of sanctions against Russia, such as bans on the import of Russian oil and gas. But the U.S. and European powers have refused Kyiv’s pleas for direct air support to fend off Russian attacks.
The latest U.S. aid package includes heavy artillery and ammunition for Ukrainian fighters who are redoubling defenses in the east. Biden also said the U.S. would send $500 million in humanitarian funds. In total, the U.S. has now promised $3.4 billion to Ukraine since the war began.
“Every American taxpayer, every member of our armed forces can be proud of the fact of our country’s generosity,” Biden said.
As the war raged on Thursday, residents of Ukraine continued to bury their loved ones all across the country.
In Irpin, a suburb of Kyiv, Lyudmila Goncharenko stood in the bitter cold of the city’s central cemetery preparing to bury her husband, Nicolay.
Goncharenko said her husband was killed by Russian troops on March 4, just days after the war began, but only recently was able to retrieve his body for burial. She said she wants his death investigated as a war crime.
At the gravesite, she kissed his picture as cemetery workers filled the grave with dirt. Later, the image was placed on the cross that marked his grave.
Elsewhere in Ukraine, rescue and aid efforts continued Thursday.
Outside of major cities, where the military and international humanitarian groups have maintained operations, it’s been local residents who are organizing.
A queue stretched near a commercial strip Thursday in Sviatohirsk, an eastern town that is home to a famous 16th-century monastery, with a few dozen people waiting for help from the municipality.
Watching them was Andrey, 42, a pizzeria owner who gave only his first name and who had joined the town’s Territorial Defense Force, a local militia group, when the war began. Decked out in camouflage-patterned fatigues and beige gloves and toting a spray-painted AK-47, he explained that most of the people there were residents from the town or neighboring villages.
“Those who wanted to leave, they’ve already left. The people here in front of you are the ones who don’t understand how bad it could be,’ he said. “When the mortar lands in their living room, that’s when they’ll understand.”
As in many towns in the Donbas, Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland, most of Sviatohirsk’s businesses were shuttered, and the few still open operated for only part of the day. Shelves in shops were mostly empty, and banks were closed, leaving more people to rely on humanitarian assistance.
When the aid truck arrived, those in line pressed forward, mostly silent as a municipal worker called out names from a list for people to come receive a box filled with small bags of grains, macaroni, cooking oil and other products. When the pile of boxes dwindled, many began to shout, fearing that they wouldn’t receive anything that day.
“Nobody knows when we’ll get more assistance,” said one woman, carrying her box away.
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(Bulos reported from Sviatohirsk, Kaleem from London and Lee from Los Angeles. Times staff writer Carolyn Cole in Irpin contributed to this report. )
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