More than 1,000 Ukrainian marines have surrendered in the port of Mariupol, Russia’s defense ministry said on Wednesday of its main strategic target in the eastern Donbas region, which has been reduced to ruins but not yet under Russian control.
If the Russians take the Azovstal industrial district, where the marines have been holed up, they would be in full control of Mariupol, Ukraine’s main Sea of Azov port, allowing Russia to reinforce a land corridor between separatist-held eastern areas and the Crimea region that it seized and annexed in 2014.
Surrounded and bombarded by Russian troops for weeks and the focus of some of the fiercest fighting of the war, Mariupol would be the first major city to fall since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24.
Russia’s defense ministry said that 1,026 marines had surrendered, including 162 officers.
“In the town of Mariupol, near the Ilyich Iron and Steel Works, as a result of successful offensives by Russian armed forces and Donetsk People’s Republic militia units, 1,026 Ukrainian soldiers of the 36th Marine Brigade voluntarily laid down arms and surrendered,” the ministry said in a statement.
Ukraine’s general staff said Russian forces were proceeding with attacks on Azovstal and the port, but a defense ministry spokesman said he had no information about any surrender.
Reuters journalists accompanying Russian-backed separatists saw flames billowing from the Azovstal district on Tuesday.
On Monday, the 36th Marine Brigade said it was preparing for a final battle in Mariupol that would end in death or capture as its troops had run out of ammunition.
Thousands of people are believed to have been killed in Mariupol and Russia has been massing thousands of troops in the area for a new assault, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said.
Ukraine says tens of thousands of civilians have been trapped inside the city with no way to bring in food or water, and accuses Russia of blocking aid convoys.
Chemical weapons warning
Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, an ardent supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin, urged remaining Ukrainians holed up in Azovstal to surrender.
“Within Azovstal at the moment there are about 200 wounded who cannot receive any medical assistance,” Kadyrov said in a Telegram post. “For them and all the rest it would be better to end this pointless resistance and go home to their families.”
Russian television showed pictures of what it said were marines giving themselves up at Illich Iron and Steel Works in Mariupol on Tuesday, many of them wounded.
It showed what it said were Ukrainian soldiers being marched down a road with their hands in the air. One of the soldiers was shown holding a Ukrainian passport.
Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar has said there was a high risk of Russia using chemical weapons in their assault on the country, echoing earlier warnings by Zelensky, who on Wednesday told the Estonian parliament by videolink Russia was using phosphorus bombs to terrorize civilians.
He did not provide evidence and Reuters has not been able to independently verify his assertion.
Chemical weapons production, use and stockpiling is banned under the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention. White phosphorous, although condemned by human rights groups, is not banned.
Russia denies using chemical weapons, saying it had destroyed its last chemical stockpiles in 2017.
Moscow’s incursion into Ukraine, the biggest attack on a European state since 1945, has seen more than 4.6 million people flee abroad, killed or wounded thousands and left Russia increasingly isolated on the world stage.
The Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office said 191 children had been killed and 349 wounded since the start of the invasion.
The Kremlin says it launched a “special military operation” to demilitarise and “denazify” Ukraine. Kyiv and its Western allies reject that as a false pretext for an unprovoked attack.
Four presidents in Kyiv
The presidents of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia arrived in Kyiv to meet Zelensky, the Polish leader’s office said. Estonian President Alar Karis had earlier tweeted that they were offering political support and military aid.
The four join a growing number of European politicians to visit the Ukrainian capital since Russian forces were driven away from the country’s north.
US President Joe Biden said for the first time that Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine amounted to genocide, as Putin said Russia would “rhythmically and calmly” continue its operation and achieve its goals.
An initial report by a mission of experts set up by Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) documents a “catalogue of inhumanity” by Russian troops in Ukraine, the US ambassador to the OSCE said.
“This includes evidence of direct targeting of civilians, attacks on medical facilities, rape, executions, looting and forced deportation of civilians to Russia,” Michael Carpenter said in a statement.
Russia has denied targeting civilians and has said Ukrainian and Western allegations of war crimes are fabricated.
Many towns Russia has retreated from in northern Ukraine were littered with the bodies of civilians killed in what Kyiv says was a campaign of murder, torture and rape.
Interfax Ukraine news agency on Wednesday quoted the Kyiv district police chief saying 720 bodies had been found in the region around the capital, with more than 200 people missing.
The General Headquarters of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said Russian forces were maintaining attacks on civilian infrastructure in the Kharkiv region in the northeast and the Zaporizhzhia region in central Ukraine.
At least seven people were killed and 22 wounded in Kharkiv over the past 24 hours, Governor Oleh Synegubov said. A 2-year-old boy was among those killed in the 53 artillery or rocket strikes Russian forces had carried out in the region, he said in an online post.
