A Ukrainian official claimed on Saturday that Russia started its attack on the last Ukrainian defenders holed up in a massive steel complex in Mariupol, days after Moscow declared victory in the southern port city and insisted its forces did not need to take the plant.
‘The adversary is trying to strangle the final resistance of Mariupol’s defenders,’ presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said, adding that Russian soldiers were attacking the Azovstal complex with air strikes and attempting to storm it.
The conflict’s greatest fight has been raging for weeks as Russia tries to recapture a city viewed as crucial to its efforts to unite the eastern Donbas area with Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula that Moscow annexed in 2014.
Two missiles hit a military installation and two residential structures in Odesa, a Black Sea port city, and two more were destroyed, according to the Ukrainian armed forces’ southern air command. Andriy Yermak, a presidential aide in Ukraine, said five people were murdered and 18 were injured.
The death toll could not be verified independently. In early April, there was a large strike in or near Odesa.
On Twitter, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said, ‘The main goal of Russian missile strikes on Odesa is terror.’ Russia has denied that people are being targeted in its ‘special military operation,’ which began on February 24.
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