The Kremlin assured Thursday that the Russian army respected a unilateral ceasefire in order to allow the evacuation of civilians from the Azovstal site in Mariupol through humanitarian corridors.
But the Ukrainians did not confirm.
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“The Russian occupiers are busy blocking and trying to annihilate Ukrainian units on the territory of Azovstal
,” the Ukrainian army said Thursday morning.
According to this, the Moscow troops have
“resumed the offensive with the support of planes to take control of the factory”
in which the last Ukrainian fighters are entrenched, as well as an undetermined number of civilians;
344 of them were able to be evacuated on Wednesday to the city of Zaporijjia.
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Also in southern Ukraine, explosions took place in Mykolaiv, a city near which Russian troops reportedly lost control of several localities, as well as around Kherson, according to the Ukrainian general staff.
Elsewhere, fighting also continued, such as in the east, where 5 people were killed in the Luhansk region between Wednesday and Thursday.
Another Russian strike killed 2 civilians and injured 11 others in the village of Chandryholove.
Western Ukraine, long spared, has again become a target of Russian strikes, which want to disrupt Western supplies in support of kyiv.
Six cruise missiles reportedly hit electrical substations near railway stations in Lviv and the Transcarpathia region, which borders Romania, Hungary and Slovakia.
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In the north, one person was killed and a child injured in a Russian strike near Kharkiv.
Russian and Ukrainian sources confirmed that a counter-offensive pushed the Russians back 40 km from this town.
On the northern borders of Ukraine, Belarus, an ally of Moscow, says it has started “ surprise
”
military maneuvers
.
The object, according to London, would be to
"inflate"
a threat from this region and to
"fix the Ukrainian forces in the north and prevent them from engaging in the battle for Donbass"
in the east.
