Russian shelling of Mariupol after brief evacuation
The evacuation of Ukraine’s war-battered city of Mariupol has begun, but the Russian shelling apparently ceased only briefly.
Ukrainian National Guard brigade commander Denys Shlega said Sunday in a televised interview that Russia’s bombardment of the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol resumed right after the partial evacuation of civilians.
Shlega said at least one more round of evacuations is needed to clear civilians from the plant, and that dozens of small children remain in bunkers below the industrial facilities.
Earlier in the day, the Mariupol city council told residents it was finally safe to evacuate and urged them to head toward Zaporozhye, 140 miles to the west. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on social media that 100 people were on their way to Ukrainian-controlled territory.
“We pray that everything will work out,” the city council said in a statement.
Shlega estimated that several hundred civilians remain at the steel plant, along with nearly 500 wounded soldiers and numerous dead bodies. According to some estimates, about 100,000 people may still be trapped in the port city, with dangerously low levels of food, water and utilities. The city council said evacuation of city districts that don’t include the steel plant has been postponed until Monday.
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Other developments:
►Russian troops have destroyed or damaged about 250 objects of the cultural heritage of Ukraine, said Oleksandr Tkachenko, Minister of Culture and Information Policy.
►German Chancellor Olaf Scholz pledged Sunday to continue to support Ukraine with money, aid and weapons, saying a pacifist approach to the war is “outdated.” Officials also said Germany expects to be independent of crude oil imports from Russia by late summer.
►Pope Francis, speaking during his traditional noontime prayer, again appealed for peace in Ukraine. Francis, in what has become a weekly plea, said he weeps thinking of the destruction of Mariupol and how the city has been “barbarously bombed and destroyed.”
►Poland’s armed forces said Sunday that weeks-long military exercises involving thousands of NATO soldiers have begun in the country.
►Undeterred by air raid sirens and warnings to shelter at home, people in the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia visited cemeteries Sunday, when Ukrainians observed the Orthodox Christian day of the dead.
Ukraine says it’s fending off Russia’s eastern push
As Russian troops focus their attack on the eastern Donbas region, the Ukrainians are determined to put up the kind of stiff resistance that prompted the invaders to retreat from the Kyiv area.
The Ukrainian army said Sunday that a Russian offensive along a broad front in the east has been stalling amid human and material losses inflicted by Kyiv’s forces. The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said in a Facebook post that Russian troops were trying to advance in the Sloboda, Donetsk, and Tauride regions, but were being held back by Ukrainian forces that continue to fight village by village.
Fighting has picked up around Kharkiv, an eastern city that was home to 1.4 million people before the war but is down to less than half of that now. Ukraine’s forces said Saturday they have retaken four villages around Kharkiv.
Pelosi meets with Zelenskyy in Kyiv
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi led a congressional delegation that met with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv as Ukraine continued to weather bombardment by Russian military forces on its southern coast and eastern parts of the country.
Pelosi, second in line to succeed the president, provided the latest U.S. show of support for Ukraine. She is the most senior American lawmaker to visit the country since Russia launched the war more than two months ago.
The visit came as some women and children were evacuated from a steel plant in Mariupol and as a Russian rocket attack destroyed an airport runway in Odesa, a Black Sea port on Ukraine’s southern border.
Pelosi posted a video to her Twitter account Sunday that showed her standing shoulder to shoulder with Zelenskyy, members of Congress – including representatives Jim McGovern, D-Mass.; Adam Schiff, D-Calif.; Jason Crow, D-Colo.; Barbara Lee, D-Calif.; Gregory Meeks, D-New York and Bill Keating, D-Mass. – and other Ukrainian officials.
“We are here to say to you that we are with you until the fight is over,” Pelosi said in the video.
Zelenskyy thanked Pelosi for the support, saying, “we’ll win together.”
Pelosi responded: “We are here until victory is won.”
Senate foreign relations chief: War ‘is not just about Ukraine’
Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said U.S. support for Ukraine is critical to maintaining international order and for keeping American service members from being dragged into combat with Russia. Speaking Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press…
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