ZAPORIZHZHIA: Ukraine said it would make a fresh attempt on Saturday to evacuate civilians from Mariupol, the devastated port city largely controlled by Russian forces, as hopes for a weekend truce faded.

Separately, a Russian strike in the Black Sea city of Odessa killed at least five people, including a baby, and wounded 18 others on Saturday, Kyiv said.

The war enters its third month on Sunday with civilians continuing to pay a heavy price amid the ongoing fighting.

“Five Ukrainians killed and 18 wounded. And those are only the ones that we were able to find. It is likely that the death toll will be heavy,” the head of Ukraine’s presidential office Andriy Yermak said on Telegram.

Earlier on Saturday, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said: “The only aim of Russian missile strikes on Odessa is terror.” Ukraine’s air force said its defence systems intercepted two Russian TU-95 missiles that it said were fired from the Caspian Sea.

Children sheltering in steel plant longing to ‘see sunlight again’

“Today we will again try to evacuate women, children and the elderly,” Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said on Telegram.

“If everything happens as planned, we will start the evacuation around noon.”

The call came a day after a senior Russian military officer said “the second phase of the special operation” — as Moscow terms its invasion of Ukraine — had begun, with the aim of controlling a huge, strategic part of Ukrainian territory.

The video was released by the Azov battalion, which was set up by pro-Ukrainian nationalists in 2014, later incorporated as a regiment in Ukraine’s national guard and has played a prominent role in the defence of Mariupol.

Reuters could not independently verify where or when the video was shot. Somebody speaking in the video mentions that the date is April 21.

The video shows soldiers bringing food for civilians who the battalion says are sheltering in the Azovstal complex.

A woman holding a toddler said people in the plant were running out of food: “We really want to go home,” she said.

Russian forces were hitting the Azovstal complex with air strikes and trying to storm it, presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said on Saturday, although Moscow had said this week that it would blockade the plant and not attempt to take it. More than 1,000 civilians are in the plant along with troops defending it, according to Ukrainian authorities.

One unnamed boy in the video said he was desperate to get out after being in the plant for two months.

“I want to see the sun because in here it’s dim, not like outside. When our houses are rebuilt we can live in peace. Let Ukraine win because Ukraine is our native home,” he said.

The video showed women wearing uniforms with the Azovstal design, which Reuters verified, matched in file images.

One woman said she had been sheltering in the steel works since Feb. 27, just days after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine.

“We are relatives of the workers. But this seemed to be the safest place at the time we came here, this was when our house came under fire and became uninhabitable,” she said.

Ukrainian authorities have vowed to fight on and drive the Russian troops from their land, but they also sought an Easter pause.

Russian forces have besieged and bombarded Mariupol since the early days of the war, leaving a city that is usually home to more than 400,000 people in ruins. A new attempt to evacuate civilians failed on Saturday, an aide to Mariupol’s mayor said.

Moscow’s troops, which withdrew from around Kyiv and the north of Ukraine after being frustrated in their attempts to take over the capital, already occupy much of the eastern Donbas region and the south.

Minnekaev said their focus was now to “provide a land corridor to Crimea,” which Russia annexed in 2014, and towards a breakaway pro-Russian region of Moldova, Transnistria, where the general claimed Russian-speaking people were “being oppressed”.

Published in Dawn, April 24th, 2022