Mariupol is being wiped off face of the Earth, say refugees fleeing area

Mayor Vadym Boichenko saidcivilians were hiding in bunkers as troops battled it out on the streets. His comments appear to confirm earlier reports that fighters were moving in on the city. He added: “There’s no city centre left. There isn’t a small piece of land in the city that doesn’t have signs of war.”

Chechen warlord Ramzan Kadyrov released footage of feared Chechen special forces fighting house-to-house in Mariupol. Heavily armed fighters were filmed pounding a high-rise building.

In propaganda footage, Kadyrov claimed it showed troops “liberating” civilians as they leave a building with children in their arms.

Serhiy Taruta, a Ukrainian politician, said around 130 people were rescued but hundreds are unaccounted for.

As Vladimir Putin shifted his military offensive to Ukraine’s west – with a missile attack hitting a target just outside the previously safe haven of Lviv – those who escaped the Russian onslaught in the east spoke of the horrors they left behind.

Arriving in Lviv yesterday morning after fleeing the devastated port of Mariupol, evacuee Yulia Yashenko, 28, said it was “only fate that we are alive”.

She added: “The city is being wiped off the face of the Earth.”

Yulia and her elderly parents were among a group of several hundred who arrived in Lviv.

She said: “Our house was burned by artillery. They fire everything at the city, every weapon is used. There is black smoke everywhere. There are bodies everywhere and there is nobody to collect them.”

Some 30,000 people have managed to flee the city.

Several of the injured residents, including children, are getting hospital treatment in Zaporizhzhia in south-east Ukraine. But 350,000 people are said to still be stranded in Mariupol, which is strategically important to Moscow because it sits in a corridor between two regions of Ukraine already under Russia’s control.

Survivors from the bombing of Mariupol’s main theatre continued to emerge yesterday, with 130 rescued. But a further 1,300 are believed to be in an undamaged bunker under the rubble where they had gone for safety. The US think tank Institute for the Study of War (ISW) yesterday warned the entire city is likely to fall in the coming weeks.

ISW analysis, agreeing with US and UK intelligence assessments, concluded the “total destruction” of Mariupol and increased targeting of its residential areas may lead to its capitulation or eventual capture.

There were also reports of mass casualties following a missile attack on a Ukrainian army barracks in the southern city of Mykolaiv, where human rights groups claimed illegal “cluster munitions” were being used.

A Ukrainian MP in Odessa, Oleksiy Honcharenko, returned from Mykolaiv in the last 24 hours. He said: “Unfortunately we had a big attack, missile attack on Mykolaiv. Dozens of people have been killed. Dozens are wounded and we’re speaking about missiles, ballistic missiles.”

And there was heavy shelling in Kharkiv in the north east, Ukraine’s second-largest city. However, local forces said they had held their ground and beaten back the Russian advance.

However, yesterday’s missile attack near Lviv showed a new direction for Putin’s offensive.

The western strike saw an aircraft maintenance plant four miles away hit by cruise missiles overnight, mayor Andriy Sadovyi said. There were no reports of casualties.

Mr Sadovyi said work on the plant stopped earlier. Rescue workers were on site. There were reports the airport was hit, but this was not correct, he added.

Previously, the west of the country had been almost untouched. However, in the last week there have been signs of a shift, with another airstrip and a military base used by Nato troops for training also hit by missiles near the Polish border.

Military analysts said they believed the move west may show growing desperation in the Kremlin, with frustration at a lack of progress elsewhere.

Intelligence shows the invading troops have become bogged down across Ukraine, hit by freezing temperatures, lack of supplies and heavy casualties.

Nearly a fifth of the invading forces have been killed, injured or captured, it is believed.

The US yesterday said the Russian advance was frozen “around the country on multiple lines of axes”.

The UK’s Ministry of Defence said Putin’s troops had made “minimal progress this week”.

Ukrainian forces around the capital Kyiv and Mykolaiv “continue to frustrate Russian attempts to encircle the cities”.

source: express.co.uk