‘HELL’
The port of Mariupol has been one of the worst cities hit, as it occupies a strategic position – its capture would link the Crimean peninsula, which Russia seized from Ukraine in 2014, with the separatist eastern regions of Donetsk and Lugansk, which broke away the same year and are controlled by Moscow-backed rebels.
Thousands of civilians are thought to be trapped inside the city, where communication, water, electricity and gas have been cut. Russia said on Saturday it had broken through the city’s defences and its troops were inside.
Last Wednesday, a theatre where more than 1,000 people had sheltered was hit, with hundreds still presumed missing in the rubble.
“This is no longer Mariupol, it’s hell,” said resident Tamara Kavunenko, 58. “The streets are full with the bodies of civilians.”
In his daily video message, Zelenskyy said that “To do such a thing to a peaceful city, what the occupiers have done, this is a terror that will be remembered even in the next century.”
The Ukrainian president, who has gained world-wide fame and admiration for staying in his capital in the face of the Russian advance, warned the Russian people that the war was costing thousands of their soldiers’ lives.
“Where the battles are especially fierce, the front line is simply littered with corpses of Russian soldiers,” he said, saying that 14,000 Russian servicemen had been killed.
“And (the number of) victims will only continue to rise,” he warned.
Russia has not provided a toll of its soldiers since early March, when it said nearly 500 servicemen had been killed.
The last Ukrainian military toll provided by Zelenskyy on Mar 12 said some 1,300 Ukrainian military had died.
Ukraine’s outmanned and outgunned military has put up a fierce resistance that has slowed Russia’s advance, stalling its forces outside the capital Kyiv and several other cities and making Moscow’s supply lines vulnerable to Ukrainian attacks.
In the encircled northern city of Chernigiv, the mayor said early Sunday that a hospital had been hit in the latest shelling, killing dozens of civilians.
“The city is suffering from an absolute humanitarian catastrophe,” mayor Vladislav Atroshenko said on television.
DIRE SITUATION
Aid agencies are struggling to reach people trapped in cities ringed by Russian forces, with the emergency coordinator of the UN’s World Food Programme telling AFP on Saturday the situation was “dire”.
More than 3.3 million refugees have fled Ukraine since the war began – Europe’s fastest growing refugee crisis since World War II – the vast majority of them women and children, according to the UN.
Another 6.5 million are throughout to be displaced inside the country.
‘STRATEGY OF ATTRITION’
In an intelligence update late Saturday, Britain’s defence ministry said Ukraine was continuing to effectively defend its airspace, forcing Russia to rely on weapons launched from its own airspace.
It said Russia had been forced to “change its operational approach and is now pursuing a strategy of attrition”.
“This is likely to involve the indiscriminate use of firepower resulting in increased civilian casualties, destruction of Ukrainian infrastructure, and intensify the humanitarian crisis,” it warned.
Ukrainian and Russian negotiators have met several times to no avail.
Russia wants Ukraine to disarm and disavow all Western alliances, in particular to renounce joining NATO or to seek closer integration with the European Union – steps that Kyiv says would turn it into a vassal state of Moscow.
Zelenskyy on Saturday again appealed for peace, urging Russia to accept “meaningful” talks.
ECONOMIC EFFECTS TO LAST ‘FOR MONTHS’
Russia’s war has been widely condemned across the globe and has sparked an unprecedented wave of Western sanctions against the country, both against Putin and his entourage and Russian companies.
Western businesses from oil companies to fast food franchises have either pulled out or halted operations in Russia, the assets of Russia’s Central Bank held abroad have been frozen and many Russian banks have been cut off from the SWIFT system that enables inter-bank transactions.
The war has sparked turmoil for the world economy as it recovers from the coronavirus pandemic.
Russia is a major exporter of oil, gas and commodities, while Ukraine also is a major supplier of wheat, so the war has sent commodity prices rocketing on supply fears, fuelling inflation that was already at multi-decade highs, the chief economist with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development told AFP.
“Even if the war stopped today, the consequences of this conflict would be felt for months to come,” Beata Javorcik said.
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