Latest Update in Ukraine War and The Pounding of The Mariupol Plant
The New York Times
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| David Guttenfelder for The New York Times |
President Vladimir Putin said those who threaten Russia should “think twice,” though his Defense Ministry said the weapon needed more testing before it could be deployed. Moscow’s offensive in eastern Ukraine continued, as Ukrainian officials said they were pushing back.
ImageMaxim and Tanya Khomenko, with the help of their relatives, moved their belongings from their destroyed apartment building in Horenka, northwest of Kyiv, Ukraine.
Maxim and Tanya Khomenko, with the help of their relatives, moved their belongings from their destroyed apartment building in Horenka, northwest of Kyiv, Ukraine.Credit...David Guttenfelder for The New York Times
Marc Santora and Matthew Rosenberg
Here are the latest developments in the war in Ukraine.
Russian forces pressed their offensive in Ukraine on Wednesday, raining artillery and missile strikes along the long eastern front, as Moscow took the provocative step of test-launching an intercontinental ballistic missile designed to evade defenses.
In announcing the test, President Vladimir V. Putin said the new missile, known as the Sarmat, should cause anyone threatening Russia to “think twice.” Yet the Russian Defense Ministry said the weapon needs more testing before it can be deployed.
For Ukraine and its allies, though, the more immediate concern was the battle for the east and the scene in the southeastern city of Mariupol, where Ukrainian soldiers holding out inside a sprawling steel factory warned that they could be killed within hours. Yet even as the troops defied a Russian deadline to surrender, a tentative deal was reached to allow women and children to evacuate the besieged port city. It was unclear whether civilians also sheltering inside the steel plant would be covered by the deal.
Along the 300-mile eastern front, which stretches from Mariupol north to Kharkiv, U.S. and Ukrainian officials said that Russia continued to pour in soldiers, artillery units, and military hardware as it launches a renewed assault aimed at grinding down and encircling Ukrainian forces and capturing all of the eastern territory known as the Donbas.
“Virtually the entire combat-ready part of the invaders’ army is concentrated on the territory of our state and in the border areas of Russia,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said overnight.
As Russia refocuses on the east following its failure to take Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, it is confronting Ukrainian forces that have spent years digging trenches and fortifying defensive positions during a grinding conflict with Russian-backed separatists that began in 2014 that resulted in the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Luhansk.
Although no major battles have yet been waged in the days since Russia signaled the start of the offensive, and no significant territory has changed hands, Moscow’s superior weaponry and a more favorable terrain suggest a bloody fight to come.
In other developments:
President Biden was scheduled to meet with top U.S. defense officials, a day after saying that the United States would send more artillery to help Ukraine hold off Russia’s new offensive. Ukraine’s allies are scrambling to deliver more advanced weapons for the battle in the east, where its defense is expected to rely on long-range missiles, howitzers, and armed drones.
President Vladimir V. Putin on Wednesday will discuss the Russian economy and the country’s development under the heavyweight of sanctions with the heads of the biggest steel producers and with aspiring young managers and entrepreneurs.
The United Nations refugee agency reported that the number of people who have fled Ukraine for other countries since the war began has surpassed five million.
Wimbledon confirmed that it will bar Russian and Belarusian players from this year’s tennis tournament because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Belarus’ support of the war, according to a senior international tennis official. The Kremlin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, denounced the move as “unacceptable.”
Isabella Kwai
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Boris Johnson urges Russia to treat a British prisoner with ‘care and compassion.’
Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain appealed to Russia to treat the captured British fighter, Aiden Aslin, with “care and compassion.”Credit...Neil Hall/EPA, via Shutterstock
LONDON —
Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain on Wednesday urged Russia to humanely treat a British fighter believed to have been captured in Mariupol, Ukraine.
“I hope that he is treated with care and compassion,” Mr. Johnson said in comments to British lawmakers. He added that the British government was discouraging people from joining the conflict in Ukraine, but that he understood that the fighter, Aiden Aslin, was not a mercenary and served in the Ukrainian army.
Several high-profile prisoners held by Russia and Ukraine have appealed for an exchange. Viktor Medvedchuk, a Ukrainian oligarch and ally of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia who is being held by Ukraine, asked for an exchange in a video posted to Twitter on Monday by the Security Service of Ukraine.
A screengrab from Russian state television reportedly showed Aiden Aslin, a British man fighting for Ukraine, at an undisclosed location after being captured by a Russian force in Mariupol.Credit...Rossyia, via Reuters
The video shows a “flagrant breach of the Geneva Convention,” said Robert Jenrick, a conservative lawmaker who represents the constituency in central England where Mr. Aslin is from. The Geneva Conventions bar coerced interviews with prisoners of war.
Mr. Aslin moved to Ukraine in 2018 and settled in the southern city of Mykolaiv with his girlfriend, his family said in a statement released by Mr. Jenrick on Tuesday. He had served with the Ukrainian marines for four years, they said, adding that they were in contact with Britain’s foreign office to try to secure his and Mr. Pinner’s release.
“The video of Aiden speaking under duress and having clearly suffered physical injuries is deeply distressing,” the family statement said. “He has played his part in defending Ukraine’s right to self-determination.”
Mr. Johnson said that officers serving in the Russian forces would be prosecuted by international criminal prosecutions.
“The savagery that the Russians are now unleashing on Ukraine is clearly authorized from the very top,” Mr. Johnson said. “They will eventually face justice.”
Johanna Lemola and Steven Erlanger
Finland’s Parliament opens a debate on joining NATO amid a surge in political and public support for the alliance.
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HELSINKI —
Finland’s Parliament opened a debate on Wednesday about whether to seek NATO membership, amid a surge in public support since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and indications from the country’s main parties that they favor joining.
The support comes despite threats from neighboring Russia of retaliation should Finland and Sweden join NATO, abandoning their long tradition of military nonalignment.
Finland’s influential president, Sauli Niinisto, and its prime minister, Sanna Marin, have been careful not to take sides in the debate, but Ms. Marin told Parliament that “it is time to make decisions.”
Antti Lindtman of Ms. Marin’s Social Democratic Party said that “Finland is many steps closer to the necessity of military alliance,” while Ville Tavio of the conservative, populist Finns Party, the second-largest in Parliament, declared that “the moment of joining NATO is drawing closer.”
Antti Hakkanen, parliamentary group leader of the third-largest party, the National Coalition, came out strongly in favor of NATO membership. Even the traditionally anti-NATO Left Alliance expressed only reservations but did not come out in opposition to the idea.
Parliament was debating a new report on Finland’s changed security environment in light of the Russian war against Ukraine. The president and government can decide to apply for NATO membership on their own but clearly want a thorough parliamentary debate.
There is wide expectation that Finland will apply to join the alliance together with a more reluctant Sweden in time for NATO’s annual summit meeting in late June.
Alan Rappeport
During a G20 meeting on Wednesday, several finance ministers and central bank governors, including Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen and Ukraine’s finance minister, Serhiy Marchenko, walked out when Russia’s finance minister started to speak as he participated virtually, according to a person familiar with the meeting. Some bank governors and ministers turned off their cameras when he spoke.
Anton Troianovski
Russia says it has successfully tested a new intercontinental missile that can evade defenses.
Putin Says New Missile Will Make Russia’s Detractors ‘Think Twice’
Video released by the Russian Defense Ministry shows the successful launch of the new Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile. credit credit...Agence France-Presse, via the Russian Defence Ministry
Russia announced on Wednesday it had successfully launched a new missile that it said could deploy nuclear warheads at hypersonic speeds anywhere in the world and outwit defenses, a move that President Vladimir V. Putin said was aimed at showing Russia’s adversaries that they needed to “think twice” before threatening his country.
But even if the test was successful, the new missile does not appear ready for use. The Russian Defense Ministry said Wednesday’s test launch of the Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile was it's first and that it would enter Russia’s arsenal only “after the completion of the testing program.” There was no immediate comment from American officials about the launch.
Mr. Putin first announced Russia had developed the Sarmat in 2018, but his decision to test it on Wednesday appeared intended to send a blunt message in the middle of the war in Ukraine. Analysts have speculated that Mr. Putin could escalate the threat of using nuclear weapons to try to deter Western countries from supporting Ukraine and to force Ukraine to surrender.
“This truly unique weapon will force all who are trying to threaten our country in the heat of frenzied, aggressive rhetoric to think twice,” Mr. Putin said in brief televised remarks on Wednesday.
The Defense Ministry released footage showing a white missile emerging from an underground silo in a snowy launch site in a ball of fire and then speeding into the sky. The launch took place at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northwest Russia, the ministry said, and hit a target on the Kamchatka Peninsula 3,500 miles to the east.
Mr. Putin was shown overseeing the launch by videoconference at the Kremlin and receiving a report from Defense Minister Sergei K. Shoigu. Mr. Putin said in his brief remarks that the Sarmat consisted only of Russian-made components, an apparent attempt to show that Russia’s defense industry was undaunted by Western economic sanctions.
Anton Troianovski
The Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile was test-launched on Wednesday from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northwest Russia and struck a target on the Kamchatka Peninsula, 3,500 miles to the east, the Russian Defense Ministry said. It was the first launch of the Sarmat, which President Putin first described in 2018, and it will require further testing before it can be deployed, the Defense Ministry said.
Russia announced a successful test launch of a new intercontinental ballistic missile, the Sarmat, which Russia has said can deploy many nuclear warheads and decoys meant to outwit antimissile systems anywhere in the world. The new missile, President Vladimir V. Putin said in brief televised remarks, “will force all who are trying to threaten our country in the heat of frenzied, aggressive rhetoric to think twice.”
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| Maxym Marusenko/NurPhoto via Getty Images |
The civilians who have been sheltering underground at a Mariupol steel plant for more than 50 days have endured desperate conditions, running low on food and emerging to check on each other only between Russian artillery barrages, two employees who managed to escape said.
The Azovstal plant is the last Ukrainian holdout against Russia’s battle for the port city and could have just hours left before it falls. Ukrainian forces defending it have vowed to fight until the “last drop of blood.”
Some who escaped last month described a dire situation in the dozens of bomb shelters underneath the plant and expressed regret about leaving behind the hundreds of others, including women and children, who are now caught in what may be a final battle in Russia’s siege on the city. Videos circulated this week showing people still surviving in the bunkers below the facility.
Alexey Yoguruv fled to the Soviet-era factory in February with his wife, his mother-in-law and his two daughters, days after the Russians started shelling his neighborhood. Initially, everyone had three meals a day, and families shared cooking and cleaning duties. To unwind, they played board games and sang together.
“Everyone knew their part — we were like a family,” he said. “The only thing missing was sunlight,” said Mr. Yoguruv, who was the plant’s deputy director for maintenance.
But the situation steadily worsened as supplies grew scarce, he said. “As the weeks went on, we began rationing our food, the adults would eat one meal a day.”
Before the war, the plant was an engine of Mariupol’s economy, employing more than 11,000 people and producing 4.3 million tons of steel annually. After Russia invaded, the company that owns the mill, Metinvest, encouraged its staff members to stay in the bunkers with their families.
“We started working immediately to prepare all of the bunkers for the families,” said Ivan Goltvenko, the chief of human resources at the plant, who helped organize a team of drivers to shuttle people from their homes in company cars to the plant. “Of course, we never imagined that people would have to stay there for over 50 days.”
As the Russians ramped up their attacks on neighborhoods, more families started to flood into the plant. Employees estimated that at least 4,000 people were sheltering there by early March. Mr. Yoguruv said there were as many as 90 bunkers at the plant, each of which can hold as many as 75 people.
He said he tried to take his family out in early March, but his mother-in-law was wounded in crossfire and the survivors were forced back. She later died in a hospital. He learned of her death from a nurse who sent updates to his phone, which he would check by dashing aboveground to a corner of the plant where there was cellphone service.
Communication in the plant was difficult. Contrary to Russia’s claims that the underbelly of the plant consists of a sophisticated tunnel and telecom system, the employees said they lived in silos, only checking in with other groups when they emerged after the dust had cleared from another round of shelling.
After losing his mother-in-law, Mr. Yoguruv committed to getting the rest of his family out while there was still time.
“We get one chance in this life — and that was mine,” he said. With help from Ukrainian forces, he arranged an escape route and managed to evacuate most of the people in his bunker on March 18 in three vans.
“We were heading into a vacuum,” he said.
Still, he said, watching the Russians bombard the plant this week, from his new temporary home in Kryvyi Rih, filled him with remorse. “I think of my two daughters when I see the faces of the people who are down there,” he said. “They cannot last in there forever.”
Mr. Goltvenko, who managed to leave the plant with his family, described a similarly harrowing path out. “I watched two nine-story buildings explode in front of my car as I was racing to the edge of the city,” he said. “At that moment, I knew I had a one-way ticket out of Mariupol and I was going to take it.”
Mr. Goltvenko said he knows many of the people still in the bunkers.
“I am haunted by this shame for having escaped,” he said. “I feel like I should be down there with them.”
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| A photo released by state media showed President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia speaking during an event at the Kremlin on Wednesday.Credit...Sputnik, via Reuters |
Anton Troianovski
In a televised exchange with a 12-year-old girl on Wednesday, President Vladimir V. Putin put on display the false narrative he is using to try to justify to the Russian public his invasion of Ukraine.
Mr. Putin was meeting in a grand Kremlin hall with young participants in government-sponsored initiatives focusing on domestic tourism and other issues. One of the speakers was Diana Krasovskaya, 12, who said she was originally from the Luhansk region of eastern Ukraine and was forced to flee to Crimea amid the war fought by Russian-backed separatists that started in 2014.
She read aloud a poem she said she wrote that highlighted the idea — common in Mr. Putin’s public statements — that the people of eastern Ukraine are really Russian, and Russia’s military their rightful defenders.
“I am Russian, I take pride in Russia, and my home is here,” she said.
Mr. Putin told Ms. Krasovskaya that the “tragedy” in the eastern Donbas region — where he falsely claims Ukraine was perpetrating a “genocide” against Russian speakers — had “forced, simply compelled Russia to start this military operation.”
In that narrative, piped into Russian homes daily via state television, the “special military operation” is one of establishing peace, not a war of aggression.
“I am sure that thanks to Russia, peace will come,” Ms. Krasovskaya said.
“That’s how it will be,” Mr. Putin told her.
Under Russian bombardment, the Ukrainian commander in Mariupol says forces could have only hours left.
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The Azovstal steel plant on Tuesday in the southern port city of Mariupol, Ukraine.Credit...Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters |
A Ukrainian marine commander said his forces and hundreds of civilians hunkered down at a sprawling steel plant in the port city of Mariupol had only days — or perhaps hours — to live.
The government in Kyiv accused Russia of using powerful bunker-busting bombs to drive the Ukrainians above ground, and on Wednesday, officials said that a makeshift hospital near the factory had been bombed overnight, leaving hundreds trapped under the rubble.
Russia said once again that Ukrainian soldiers should surrender if they did not want to be killed, but the Ukrainians vowed to fight until the “last drop of blood.” In a series of videos, phone calls and messages on social media, Ukrainian forces begged for international support to help them fight their way out or be granted safe passage under the supervision of a third party.
“We are probably facing our last days, if not hours,” Serhiy Volyna, a commander from the 36th Separate Marine Brigade, said from the besieged Azovstal steel factory. “We appeal and plead to all world leaders to help us.”
Sources: Satellite image taken April 9 by Maxar Technologies. Russian troop positions from the Institute for the Study of War with American Enterprise Institute's Critical Threats Project. Note: Russian-controlled areas represent territory that Russian forces are able to operate freely in, without immediate risk of Ukrainian counterattacks, as assessed by the Institute for the Study of War on April 18. Areas of Russian advances indicate where Russian troops were seen.
By Scott Reinhard
Mr. Volyna, speaking in a video message posted on Facebook, said that Ukrainian forces were outnumbered 10 to one.
While it is hard to know how many people are in the bunkers, Mr. Volyna said that 500 people there were injured and that “hundreds of civilians, including women and children”, were running out of food and water.
Two soldiers at the steel plant told The New York Times that Russian forces were bombing the facility with everything they have. Their accounts — taken together with public statements released early Wednesday by Ukrainian commanders, local politicians, and others in communication with people inside bunkers — paint a portrait of despair and defiance as the battle for total control over the mutilated city culminates with the same brutality that has defined the onslaught since Russian forces surrounded the city some 50 days ago.
The city around the plant is now razed. The number of dead is unknown, but the Ukrainian government estimates that the toll is now more than 20,000. There are at least 120,000 people still living in the once-thriving industrial city, according to local officials.
The Ukrainian government said that had it reached an agreement with the Russians to allow women, children, and the elderly to leave the city starting at 2 p.m. Wednesday. However, previous agreements have fallen apart and officials cautioned that the situation could change quickly. It was unclear if anyone sheltering in the steel factory would be allowed to escape.
The deputy mayor of Mariupol, Sergei Orlov, told the BBC on Wednesday that most of the civilians who sought safety at the steel plant did so after their homes were destroyed or because they had family members working at the complex.
Serhiy Taruta, a former governor of the Donetsk region and a native of Mariupol, said that the Russian forces had dropped a bomb on a hospital.
“There are about 300 people under the rubble, including children,” he said. His claims, posted on social media, could not be independently verified. But they were echoed by Sviatoslav Palamar, a military commander inside the steel plant.
“We are pulling people from the rubble,” he told Radio Liberty.
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