Ukraine says fighting rages around Mariupol steel plant, port

KYIV (REUTERS) – Ukraine said on Friday (April 15) it was trying to break Russian forces’ siege of Mariupol, with fighting raging around the city’s Illich steel works and port, as the capital Kyiv was rocked by some of the most powerful explosions in two weeks.

Russia said it had struck overnight what it said was a factory in Kyiv that made and repaired anti-ship missiles, in apparent retaliation for the sinking of the Moskva, the flagship of Moscow’s Black Sea fleet, on Thursday.

Ukraine said one of its missiles had caused the Moskva to sink, in a powerful symbol of its resistance to a better-armed foe. Moscow said the ship sank while being towed in stormy seas after a fire caused by an explosion of ammunition.

The United States believes the Moskva was hit by two Ukrainian missiles and that there were Russian casualties, although numbers were unclear, a senior US official said on Friday.

Russia has previously said more than 500 sailors on board the Moskva were evacuated after the blast. Neither that assertion nor the US assessment could be independently verified.

Mariupol, on the Sea of Azov, has seen the worst fighting of the war. Home to 400,000 people before Russia’s invasion, the city has been reduced to rubble in seven weeks of siege and bombardment.

Thousands of civilians have died and tens of thousands are still trapped in the city.

“The situation in Mariupol is difficult and hard. Fighting is happening right now. The Russian army is constantly calling on additional units to storm the city,” defence ministry spokesman Oleksandr Motuzyanyk said.

“But as of now the Russians haven’t managed to completely capture it,” he told a televised briefing.

Motuzyanyk said Russia had used long-range bombers to attack Mariupol for the first time since its Feb 24 invasion, and that elsewhere Russian forces were concentrating efforts on seizing the cities of Rubizhne and Popasna in Ukraine’s east.

Moscow has said its main war aim is to capture the Donbas, an eastern region of two provinces that are already partly held by the Russian-backed separatists, after its invasion force was driven from the outskirts of Kyiv earlier this month.

Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said that 2,864 people had been evacuated from conflict areas on Friday, including 363 people from Mariupol who used their own transport.