KYIV, Ukraine — More than 10,000 people have died since the Russian siege of Mariupol began, the city’s mayor told The Associated Press.
Mayor Vadym Boychenko then warned that the actual toll could be twice as high.
Reached by telephone by the AP on Monday, Bochenko said the streets of the city are “lined” with bodies.
He said Russian forces brought mobile crematoria to the scene to dispose of the bodies, and accused them of blocking access for humanitarian convoys to the town in an attempt to cover up the carnage.
Russia said on Monday it had destroyed air defense systems in Ukraine over the weekend, in what appeared to be another push to gain air superiority and neutralize weapons Kyiv has described as crucial ahead of a new major offensive. scope in the east.
The initial invasion of Moscow stalled on several fronts, as it was met with strong resistance from Ukrainian forces, which prevented the Russians from taking the capital and other towns. Moscow’s inability to gain full control of Ukrainian skies hampered its ability to provide air cover to ground troops, limiting their advances and likely exposing them to greater casualties.
Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said the military used cruise missiles to destroy four S-300 air defense missile launchers in the southern outskirts of the central city from Dnipro. He added that about 25 Ukrainian soldiers were also affected by Sunday’s strike.
General Konashenkov said that Ukraine had received air defense systems from a European country which he did not name. Last week, Slovakia revealed it had handed over Soviet-designed S-300s to Ukraine, but Slovakia said it had no evidence that its system had been hit.
With their advance in many parts of the country thwarted, Russian forces increasingly relied on the bombardment of cities. The war flattened many urban areas, killed thousands, and politically and economically isolated Russia. Ukrainian authorities accuse Russian forces of committing war crimes against civilians, including a massacre outside Kyiv, airstrikes on hospitals and a missile attack that killed at least 57 people at a train station .
Now Russia is regrouping for a new push in the eastern region of Donbass, where Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian forces since 2014 and have declared independent states. Both sides are preparing for what could be a devastating war of attrition.
New call
Russia has appointed a veteran general to lead the effort, U.S. officials say, though they don’t see a single man making a difference.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky meanwhile pleads for more Western aid, saying his forces need heavier firepower to withstand the coming onslaught and repel Russian forces. Echoing his remarks in an interview with the AP, Zelensky said Sunday that the coming week could be pivotal, with Western support for his country — or lack thereof — proving decisive.
“To be honest, our ability to (survive) depends on that,” Zelensky said in an interview with 60 Minutes. Unfortunately, I am not convinced that we will receive everything we need.”
He added that he was grateful to US President Joe Biden and other Western leaders for military assistance to date, but recalled that he had “a long time ago” passed on a list of specific items including Ukraine desperately needed. In a video address to South Korean lawmakers on Monday, he specifically called for equipment capable of shooting down Russian missiles.
These armaments could come under increasing attack as Russia seeks to shift the balance in the 6-week-old war.
The Russian report of the attack on the S-300s outside Dnipro was the third such strike since the weekend. General Konashenkov said that the army also struck such systems in the Mykolaiv and Kharkiv regions. Russian military claims could not be independently verified.
Asked about the Russian claim of destroying systems supplied by a European country, Slovak Foreign Minister Ivan Korcok said on Monday he had ‘no evidence’ that the Russians had destroyed the weapons supplied. by his country. Earlier, his government had labeled reports that the system provided by Slovakia had been hit as “disinformation”.
Ukraine already had a number of Soviet-made S-300s and other long-range air defense systems, and it also received batches of Western shoulder-fired man-portable anti-aircraft weapons like Stingers, which are effective against low-flying aircraft.
Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Monday, after meeting Mr Zelensky in Kyiv. Austria, a member of the European Union, is militarily neutral and is not a member of NATO.
Mr. Nehammer said his interactions with Mr. Putin were “very direct, frank and tough”. He asked the Russian president for an immediate end to the violence.
Questions remain about the ability of the exhausted and demoralized Russian forces to gain much ground after their advance on Kyiv was repelled by determined Ukrainian defenders.
The British Ministry of Defense said on Monday that Ukraine had already repelled several assaults by Russian forces in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Lugansk ― which make up Donbass ― resulting in the destruction of Russian tanks, vehicles and artillery.
New Commander
In Washington, a senior US official said Russia had appointed General Alexander Dvornikov, one of its most experienced military leaders, to oversee the invasion. The official was not authorized to be identified and spoke on condition of anonymity. Russia does not usually announce such appointments, and there was no comment from Moscow.
General Dvornikov, 60, earned a reputation for brutality as the leader of Russian forces deployed to Syria in 2015 to support the government of President Bashar Assad during the country’s devastating civil war.
Until now, Russia had no central war commander on the ground. But US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, speaking on CNN on Sunday, downplayed the significance of the appointment.
“What we learned in the first weeks of this war is that Ukraine will never be subjugated to Russia,” he said. It doesn’t matter which general President Putin tries to appoint.”
Western military analysts say Russia’s assault is increasingly focused on eastern Ukraine – an arc stretching from Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, in the north, to Kherson in the north. south.
On Sunday, Russian forces shelled government-controlled Kharkiv and sent reinforcements towards Izyum in the southeast in an attempt to breach Ukraine’s defenses, the Ukrainian military said. The Russians also maintained their siege of Mariupol, a key southern Donbass port that has been besieged since almost the start of the war.
Oleh Synyehubov, the regional governor of Kharkiv, said on Monday Russian shelling had killed 11 people in the past 24 hours, including a 7-year-old child.
In Mariupol, Russia has deployed Chechen fighters, reputed to be particularly fierce. Capturing the city on the Sea of Azov would give Russia a land bridge to the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia seized from Ukraine and annexed eight years ago.
In a video posted on his Telegram channel, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov warned that Russian forces would launch a new offensive on Mariupol as well as Kyiv and other cities. “Our offensive work will not only be in Mariupol, but in all other settlements, towns and villages,” he said.
2/3 of Ukrainian children on the run
The UN children’s agency says nearly two-thirds of all Ukrainian children fled their homes in the six weeks following the Russian invasion, and the UN verified that 142 children were killed and 229 injured, although these figures are probably far too low.
Manuel Fontaine, UNICEF’s director of emergency programs who returned from Ukraine last week, told the UN Security Council on Monday that of the 3.2 million children who would have remained at home , “nearly half are at risk of not having enough food” and that attacks on water supply system infrastructure and power outages have left an estimated 1.4 million people in the country without access to the water.
He added that the situation is worse in towns like Mariupol and Kherson in the south, which have been besieged by Russian forces where children and their families have spent weeks without running water, sanitation facilities and a regular supply of water. food.
“Hundreds of schools and educational establishments have been attacked or used for military purposes,” denounced Mr. Fontaine. Others serve as shelters for civilians.
He said the school closures affected the education of 5.7 million school-aged children and 1.5 million students in higher education.
