Kyiv (Reuters) – Russia pressed for control of Ukraine’s Donbas area on Monday, declaring victory in the months-long struggle for Mariupol’s steel factory and starting a major offensive on the remaining Ukrainian-held territory in the province of Luhansk.
The last Ukrainian fighters holed up in Mariupol’s destroyed Azovstal steelworks surrendered on Friday, Russia’s defense ministry claimed. That concluded the most catastrophic siege of the war.
The ministry said in a statement that 2,439 defenders had surrendered in the preceding few days, including 531 in the final group.
Hours earlier, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the final defenders at the steelworks had been notified by Ukraine’s military that they could leave out and save their lives. The Ukrainians did not immediately confirm the figures on Azovstal.
Ukraine’s General Staff of Armed Forces did not comment on Russia’s assertion in its morning briefing on Saturday.
Russia also started what appeared to be a military attack to grab the last remaining Ukrainian-held territory in Luhansk, one of two southeastern Ukrainian provinces Moscow proclaims as autonomous nations.
Serhiy Gaidai, the governor of the Luhansk area, said in a social media post early on Saturday that Russia was aiming to destroy the city of Sievierodonetsk, with fighting taking place on the outskirts of the city.
“Shelling continues from morning to the evening and also during the night,” Gaidai stated in a video clip on the Telegram chat service.
In early hours on Saturday, air raid sirens were going off in most of Ukraine, notably in the Kyiv capital region and the southern port of Odesa.
Capturing Luhansk and Donetsk provinces, much of which make up Ukraine’s industrial Donbas area, would allow Moscow to claim a win after saying last month that this was now its objective.
Despite losing ground elsewhere in recent weeks, Russian soldiers have progressed on the Luhansk front.
“These will be the crucial next few weeks of the battle,” said Mathieu Boulegue, an expert at London’s Chatham House think tank. “And everything depends on how efficient they are at conquering Sievierodonetsk and the regions across it.”
The city of Sievierodonetsk and its twin, Lysychansk, across the Siverskiy Donets river, comprise the eastern part of a Ukrainian-held pocket that Russia has been seeking to overrun since mid-April after failing to conquer Kyiv.
Ukraine’s military staff warned on Saturday that Russian forces were prepared to try again to cross the river, after a previous attempt earlier this month led to one of the fiercest fights in the conflict so far.
BATTLE FOR MARIUPOL
The end of the Mariupol siege was a crucial symbolic milestone for Russia, after a series of setbacks since the invasion began on Feb. 24, but it came at the cost of immense destruction.
Zelenskiy said the region had been “totally decimated” by Russia and recommended a formal contract with the country’s partners to get Russian reimbursement for the harm its soldiers had inflicted.
Natalia Zarytska, wife of an Azovstal fighter who surrendered, said she had not heard from him since a Telegram chat exchange two days earlier. She assumed he was still alive.
“The situation is incredibly hard and horrible and my husband is on the road from one hell to another hell, from Azovstal steel plant to a prison, to captivity,” Zarytska said in Istanbul, where she and other relatives pressed Turkey to help save the fighters.
The Red Cross said it has registered hundreds of Ukrainians who surrendered at the factory as prisoners of war and Kyiv claims it wants a prisoner swap. Moscow claims the inmates would be handled humanely, but Russian leaders have been cited as saying some must be tried or even executed.
Russian forces in Ukraine have been driven in recent weeks from the area surrounding Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, their fastest withdrawal since being thrown out of the north and the Kyiv region at the end of March.
But they still control a big swathe of the south and east, and the cessation of combat in Mariupol means that that region is now completely unbroken.
In a hint of Russia’s ambition to enhance its war effort, the parliament in Moscow announced it would explore letting Russians over 40 and foreigners over 30 join the military.
The past week has also seen Sweden and Finland request to join NATO, although Turkey has threatened to prevent them, accusing the Nordic countries of harbouring Kurdish militants.
Russia’s Gazprom (MCX:GAZP) on Saturday blocked gas deliveries to Finland, the Finnish gas system operator reported, the latest escalation of an energy payments dispute with Western nations.
