Five people have been killed in a Russian missile attack on Odesa, according to Ukraine's presidential chief of staff. The dead included a three-month-old baby.
Russia fired cruise missiles at the Black Sea port city of Odesa today (April 23). It comes as Russia also attacked a steel plant in the port city of Mariupol.
An estimated 1,000 civilians are sheltered in the Azovstal plant alongside the remaining Ukrainian fighters, while Russian forces pressed their offensive elsewhere in the eastern Donbas region amid fierce Ukrainian counterattacks. The presidential adviser, Oleksiy Arestovich, said during a briefing that Russian forces had resumed airstrikes on the massive seaside plant and were trying to storm it, which would represent a reversal from an order Russian President Vladimir Putin gave two days earlier.
Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu told Mr Putin on Thursday that the whole of Mariupol, with the exception of Azovstal, had been “liberated” by the Russians. At the time, Mr Putin ordered him not to send Russian troops into the plant but instead to block off the facility, an apparent attempt to starve out the Ukrainians and force them to surrender.
Ukrainian officials have estimated that about 2,000 of their troops are inside the plant along with the civilians sheltering in the facility’s underground tunnels. Mr Arestovic said the Ukrainian forces were trying to counter the new attacks.
Earlier on Saturday, the Azov Regiment of Ukraine’s national guard, which has members holed up in the plant, released footage of around two dozen women and children, some of whom said they had been in the mill’s underground tunnels for two months and longed to see the sun.
“We want to see peaceful skies, we want to breathe in fresh air,” one woman in the video said. “You have simply no idea what it means for us to simply eat, drink some sweetened tea. For us, it is already happiness.”
The regiment’s deputy commander, Sviatoslav Palamar, told The Associated Press the video was shot on Thursday, the same day Russia declared victory over the rest of Mariupol. The contents could not be independently verified.
Both Ukrainian and Russian authorities have said the Azovstal plant is the last remaining defence stronghold in Mariupol, which has strategic importance to Moscow and has been under siege since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. More than 100,000 people — down from a pre-war population of about 430,000 — are believed to be trapped in Mariupol with little food, water or heat, according to Ukrainian authorities.
The footage of Azovstal showed soldiers giving sweets to children who respond with fist bumps. One young girl says she and her relatives “haven’t seen neither the sky, nor the sun” since they left home on February 27.
More than 20,000 civilians have been killed in Mariupol during the nearly two-month siege. Satellite images released this week showed what appeared to be mass graves near Mariupol, and local officials accused Russia of burying thousands of civilians to conceal the slaughter taking place there.
Ukrainian officials had said they were trying again on Saturday to evacuate women, children and older adults from Mariupol after many previous attempts failed. Deputy prime minister Iryna Vereshchuk said on the messaging app Telegram that the effort was to get underway at noon, but it was not clear how the new assault on the plant would affect any possible evacuation.
