Russia unleashes rockets at Mariupol steel plant

Russia unleashed rockets yesterday on an encircled steel works in Mariupol, Ukraine’s last redoubt in the port city, after a ceasefire broke down with some civilians still trapped beneath the sprawling site despite a UN-brokered evacuation.However, scores of evacuees who managed to leave under UN and Red Cross auspices at the weekend after cowering for weeks under the Azovstal plant finally reached the relative safety of Ukraine-controlled Zaporizhzhia.“We would have hoped that many more people would have been able to join the convoy and get out of hell. That is why we have mixed feelings,” Pascal Hundt from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) told journalists by Zoom.Weary-looking people, including children and pensioners, clambered off buses after escaping the ruins of their home town in southeast Ukraine where Russia now claims control.“We had said goodbye to life, we didn’t think anyone knew we were there,” said Valentina Sytnykova, 70, who said she sheltered in the plant for two months with her son and 10-year-old granddaughter.Russia has turned its heaviest firepower on Ukraine’s east and south since failing to take Kyiv, the capital, in March.However, it has also struck targets much further west in a drive to limit Ukraine’s access to the Black Sea, vital for its grain and metal exports, and also to disrupt supplies of Western military aid to President Volodymyr Zelensky’s forces.Yesterday Russia’s defence ministry said its forces had struck a military airfield near the port of Odesa with missiles, destroying drones, missiles and ammunition supplied to Ukraine by the United States and its European allies.Nearly 10 weeks into a war that has killed thousands, devastated cities and driven 5mn Ukrainians to flee abroad, Russian President Vladimir Putin raised the economic stakes for Kyiv’s Western backers yesterday by announcing plans to block the export of vital Russian raw materials.The European Union said new sanctions on Russia would target its oil industry and banks, and that it also planned to replace two-thirds of its Russian gas use by the end of 2022, part of efforts to deplete Moscow’s war-chest.The US Congress is considering a $33bn military aid package, and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced a further £300mn ($375mn) in aid, including electronic warfare equipment and a counter-battery radar system.French President Emmanuel Macron urged Putin in a phone call yesterday to order an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine and to lift Russia’s embargo on Ukrainian exports via the Black Sea.Putin said Russia remained open to dialogue, the Kremlin said.German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Putin’s policies were “imperialistic”, and that he would support Finland and Sweden if they decided to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato), as each is now considering.“No one can assume that the Russian president and government will not on other occasions break international law with violence,” said Scholz, who in the past has been accused of being too soft on Moscow but has now thrown Germany’s support behind the EU plans for a ban on Russian oil imports.EU countries have paid more than €47bn ($47.43bn) to Russia for gas and oil since it invaded Ukraine, according to research organisation the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air.Under the decree signed by Putin yesterday, Russia’s government has 10 days in which to draw up a sanctions list targeting specific people and entities in “unfriendly” states.Osnat Lubrani, UN humanitarian co-ordinator for Ukraine, said 101 evacuees including young children and pensioners had reached Zaporizhzhia yesterday from Mariupol.“I can’t believe I made it, we just want rest,” said Alina Kozitskaya, who spent weeks sheltering in a basement with her bags packed waiting for a chance to escape.Mariupol, a city of 400,000 before Russia launched its invasion on February 24, has seen the bloodiest fighting of the war, enduring weeks of siege and shelling.Some 100,000 civilians are still in the ruined city.In a Telegram video from the steel plant, Captain Sviatoslav Palamar of Ukraine’s Azov Regiment said Russia had pounded Azovstal with naval and barrel artillery through the night and dropped heavy bombs from planes.Reuters could not independently verify his account.However, Reuters images on Monday showed volleys of rockets fired from a Russian truck-mounted launcher towards Azovstal.Russia calls its actions a “special operation” to disarm Ukraine and protect it from fascists.Ukraine and the West say the fascist allegation is baseless and that the war is an unprovoked act of aggression.At least 10 people were killed and 15 wounded by Russian shelling of a coking plant in the city of Avdiivka in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine yesterday, the regional governor said.“At least 10 killed and 15 wounded, the consequences of the shelling of the Avdiivka coke plant by the Russian occupiers,” the governor of the Donetsk region Pavlo Kyrylenko said on Telegram.He warned that the number of victims may rise.Kyrylenko said the strike came as “the workers had just finished their shift and were waiting at the bus stop for a bus to take them home from the factory”.“The Russians knew where they were aiming.” Avdiivka – an industrial town north of separatist-controlled Donetsk – is on the frontline of the war with Russia.The coke plant – one of Europe’s largest – has been the target of multiple attacks in recent years as Russia-backed separatist forces battled Ukrainian troops.The Ukrainian president’s office said earlier other areas of Donetsk were under constant fire.