East Ukraine under heavy fire in advance of Russian holiday
India Today
Ukrainian authorities reported intense Russian fire in the Donbas. In the ruined southern port city of Mariupol, Ukrainian fighters holed up in the steel plant that represents the last pocket of resistance.
Moscow's offensive in eastern Ukraine gathered momentum as several areas came under heavy shelling Thursday, amid suspicions Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to score a major battlefield success in time for Victory Day, one of Russia's proudest holidays, on May 9.
Ukrainian authorities reported intense Russian fire in the Donbas — the eastern industrial heartland that the Kremlin is bent on capturing — and near Kharkiv, a northeastern city outside the Donbas that is seen as key to the offensive.
In the ruined southern port city of Mariupol, Ukrainian fighters holed up in the steel plant that represents the last pocket of resistance said concentrated bombing overnight killed and wounded more people. And authorities warned that a lack of safe drinking water inside the city could lead to outbreaks of deadly diseases.
The fresh attacks came as the United Nations chief met in Kyiv with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and surveyed the destruction in small towns outside the capital that saw some of the worst horrors of the first onslaught of the war.
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres condemned the atrocities committed in towns like Bucha, where evidence of mass killings of civilians was found after Russia retreated in the face of unexpectedly stiff resistance. He called such towns “the epicenter of unbearable heartbreak and pain.”
“Wherever there is a war, the highest price is paid by civilians,” Guterres lamented, reiterating the importance of investigating alleged war crimes.
Separately, Ukraine's prosecutor accused 10 Russian soldiers, including a general, of being “involved in the torture of peaceful people” in Bucha. Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova did not say her office had filed criminal charges, and she appealed to the public to help assemble evidence. Russia denies it targets civilians.
