UKRAINE LATEST: Ukraine’s deputy prime minister says all women, children and older adults have been evacuated from a Mariupol steel mill long besieged by Russian forces.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged residents numbed by more than 10 weeks of war to heed air raid warnings.
Moscow’s also has sought to sweep across southern Ukraine to both cut off the country from the sea and to connect its territory to the breakaway Transnistria region of Moldova, long home to Russian troops. But it has struggled to achieve those objectives. Against that backdrop, Ukrainian fighters made a final stand to prevent a complete takeover of Mariupol. Securing the strategically important Sea of Azov port would give Moscow a land bridge to the Crimea Peninsula, which Russia annexed from Ukraine during a 2014 invasion.
Evacuating civilians from the plant them has drawn the world’s attention, with the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross desperately trying to organize departures. The escape of the civilians puts new pressure on Ukraine to find a way out for the fighters, who have vowed not to surrender. Already Russian forces had probed the plant and even reached into its warren of tunnels, according to Ukrainian officials.
While they pounded away at the plant, Russian forces struggled to make significant gains elsewhere nearly 2 1/2 months into a ruinous war that has killed thousands of people, forced millions to flee Ukraine and flattened large swaths of some cities.
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