FIGHTING RAGES
On the battlefield, both sides appear determined to press where they can.
Ukrainian officials still believe that Russia wants to take the capital Kyiv, dismissing suggestions that the Kremlin is focused on the eastern Donbas region.
Capturing “Kyiv is essentially a captured Ukraine, and this is their goal”, said deputy defence minister Ganna Malyar, insisting that Russia was still “trying to break through the corridor around Kyiv and block transport routes”.
On Monday, Russian attacks near Kyiv cut power to more than 80,000 homes, officials said, underscoring the continued peril facing the capital.
While Ukraine’s forces are counterattacking in the north, they are struggling to retain control of the southern port city of Mariupol.
Russian forces have encircled the city and have embarked on a campaign of steady and indiscriminate bombardment, trapping an estimated 160,000 people with little food, water or medicine.
At least 5,000 people have already died, according to one senior Ukrainian official who estimated that the real toll may be closer to 10,000 when all the bodies are collected.
“The burials stopped 10 days ago because of continued shelling,” Tetyana Lomakina, a presidential adviser now in charge of humanitarian corridors, told AFP by phone on Monday.
Local lawmaker Kateryna Sukhomlynova told AFP that unburied bodies line streets, and residents cowering in basement shelters have been forced to eat snow to stay hydrated.
Ukraine’s foreign ministry called the situation “catastrophic”, saying that Russia’s assault from land, sea and air had turned a city once home to 450,000 people “into dust”.
France, Greece and Turkey are hoping to launch a mass evacuation of civilians from Mariupol within days, according to French President Emmanuel Macron, who is seeking agreement from Putin.
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