In what would be its biggest victory yet in the war with Ukraine, Russia claimed to have captured the strategic port city of Mariupol. The announcement came Friday after a nearly three-month siege that reduced much of the city to a smoking ruin. More than 20,000 civilians are feared dead. Russia reported the “complete liberation” of the Azovstal steel plant, which was the last stronghold of Ukrainian resistance. There was no immediate confirmation from Ukraine. In other developments, the West moved to pour billions more in aid into Ukraine, and fighting raged in the Donbas, the industrial heartland in eastern Ukraine that Russia is bent on capturing.
The steelworks, which sprawled across 11 square kilometers , had been the site of fierce fighting for weeks. The dwindling group of outgunned fighters had held out, drawing Russian airstrikes, artillery and tank fire, before their government ordered them to abandon the plant's defense and save themselves.
Russian forces shelled a vital highway and kept up attacks on a key city in the Luhansk region, hitting a school among other sites, Ukrainian authorities said. Luhansk is part of the Donbas. Satellite images in April showed what appeared to be mass graves just outside Mariupol, where local officials accused Russia of concealing the slaughter by burying up to 9,000 civilians.
Natalia Zaritskaya, wife of another fighter at Azovstal, said that based on the messages she had seen over the past two days, “Now they are on the path from hell to hell. Every inch of this path is deadly.”
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