Russian forces on Friday appeared close to capturing the port city of Mariupol, Ukraine, following more than six weeks of bruising setbacks, including the sinking of Moscow’s crowning jewel in its Black Sea Fleet.
Mariupol has been the target of massive shelling since the start of the invasion and has been one of the hardest-hit cities. Russian forces have gone after civilians, including children, as well as schools, hospitals, and bread lines. They have cut off lines of communication from the besieged city and, at times, prohibited humanitarian convoys from entering.
Local residents have reported Russian troops are digging up bodies that had been previously buried in residential courtyards and prohibiting any new burials “of people killed by them,” the Mariupol City Council said Friday.
“A watchman has been assigned to each courtyard and is not allowing Mariupol residents to lay to rest dead relatives or friends,” the council said on the messaging app Telegram. “Why the exhumation is being carried out and where the bodies will be taken is unknown.”
The Washington Examiner has not been able to verify the claim independently.
Despite withstanding weeks of near-constant shelling and bombardment from the land, sea, and air, the last of Ukraine’s forces have been isolated to a steel mill plant.
An adviser to Mariupol’s mayor denied the Kremlin’s claims of a mass surrender in the city but conceded that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s soldiers had taken some of the remaining Ukrainian fighters as prisoners.
ZELENSKY BELIEVES ‘TENS OF THOUSANDS’ OF MARIUPOL RESIDENTS KILLED
Seven people died and 27 other people were wounded in the Ukrainian village of Borovaya after Russian troops opened fire on buses carrying civilians, a spokesman for the regional prosecutor’s office told Ukraine’s Suspilne news website on Friday.
Dmytro Chubenko said law enforcement agencies were looking into the circumstances of the attack and added that investigators are also establishing the routes and destination of the vehicles carrying civilians to safety across the Russian-controlled territory around the village. Borovaya is located near the city of Kharkiv.
Britain’s Ministry of Defense said Friday that the sinking of Russia’s naval flagship, the Moskva, would likely force Moscow to change the way its naval forces operate in the Black Sea.
Ukraine claimed it struck the Soviet-era ship with missiles, while Moscow said a fire that had started on board led to the sinking.
Britain said the Moskva, which returned to operational service last year, “served a key role as both a command vessel and air defense node.”
The sinking “means Russia has now suffered damage to two key naval assets since invading Ukraine, the first being Russia’s Alligator-class landing ship Saratov on 24 March. Both events will likely lead Russia to review its maritime posture in the Black Sea,” the ministry said.
As Moscow was assessing its loss at sea, its defense ministry on Friday promised to ramp up “the scale of missile attacks” on the capital city of Kyiv in response to Ukraine’s “diversions on the Russian territory.”
“The number and scale of missile strikes against targets in Kyiv will increase in response to any terrorist attacks or sabotage committed by the Kyiv nationalist regime on Russian territory,” the ministry said in its daily update, adding that Russian troops hit a “military” factory outside Kyiv late Thursday using Kalibr sea-based long-range missiles.
Moscow has accused Ukraine of launching airstrikes on residential buildings in one of the country’s regions on the border with Ukraine, which led to seven people being injured.
Russian officials said 100 residential buildings were damaged in Thursday’s attack on the Klimovo village in the Bryansk region.
Moscow also sent a letter to the United States, warning that shipping weapons to Ukraine and arming soldiers could have “unpredictable consequences.”
In the note, obtained by the Washington Post, Russia said U.S. and NATO shipments of the “most sensitive” weapons systems were “adding fuel” to the already complicated conflict and warned that doing so could have “unpredictable consequences.” The note came as the Biden administration signed off on an expansion of weapons being provided to Ukrainian forces that included 155 mm howitzers, as well as coastal defense drones, armored vehicles, portable antiaircraft and antitank weapons, as well as millions of rounds of ammunition.
In his nightly address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told his countrymen and countrywomen that they should be proud of having survived 50 days under Russian attack when Moscow “gave us a maximum of five.”
Zelensky called it “an achievement of millions of Ukrainians, of everyone who on Feb. 24 made the most important decision of their life — to fight.”
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Meanwhile, it was more bad news for Putin’s friend Viktor Medvedchuk. More than 150 assets belonging to the captured oligarch have been seized, Ukrainian officials said. They have taken possession of 26 cars, 32 apartments, 23 houses, 30 plots of land, 17 parking spots, and a yacht belonging to Medvedchuk, who was charged with treason last year and captured earlier this week attempting to flee the country.
Putin is the godfather of Medvedchuk’s youngest daughter. Zelensky had proposed a prisoner swap, but Russia has refused to acknowledge that Medvedchuk had been captured despite a picture of him in army fatigues with a Ukrainian flag patch circulating.
