Moscow, April 20, (dpa/GNA) – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, told of a massive Russian troop build-up as an expected offensive started, and made another plea Tuesday to western countries to supply Ukraine with more weapons.
“Now practically the entire combat-ready part of the Russian army is concentrated on the territory of our state and in Russia’s border areas,” Zelensky said in his daily video address.
He reiterated calls for more arms deliveries. “If we had access to all the weapons we need, that our partners have and that are comparable to the weapons of the Russian Federation, we would have already ended this war,” Zelensky said.
It is a “moral duty” for those countries that have these weapons to provide them, he asserted.
A Russian deadline for fighters to leave the heavily contested city of Mariupol passed on Tuesday without people departing from the area, according to forces backed by Moscow.
“No one used the new humanitarian corridor formed around Azovstal for civilians,” Alexei Nikonorov, a spokesman for the pro-Russian separatists, told Russian state news agency RIA Novosti.
However, Russian television reported that 120 civilians had left the Asovstal steel plant, where Ukrainian fighters are said to be holed up.
Earlier, the Russian military declared a two-hour ceasefire for the plant, the last holdout of Ukrainian forces in the port city.
Moscow also ordered fighters there to lay down their weapons and leave the site, bringing civilians with them, while the government in Kiev was called upon to “exercise reason and give the fighters appropriate instructions to end this senseless confrontation.”
Up to 1,000 civilians could be at the steelworks, according to Ukrainian media reports, while there could be up to 2,500 soldiers there, recent figures suggest.
Zelensky said the situation in the embattled eastern city of Mariupol was “as difficult as it can be.”
Russia has escalated its attacks in eastern Ukraine. Its air force has bombed 60 Ukrainian military targets since Monday, according to the Defence Ministry.
In the course of Monday night, a total of 1,260 military objects in Ukraine were fired upon by artillery.
“We can now state that Russian troops have begun the battle for the Donbass, for which they have been preparing for a long time,” Zelensky said in his video message.
But the Ukrainian General Staff said that in the Donbass, Ukrainian forces had retaken the small town of Marinka.
The US Department of Defence sees the latest Russian attacks in eastern Ukraine as a prelude to a larger offensive by Moscow, according to a senior Pentagon official.
Britain’s Ministry of Defence (MoD), in a Tuesday night intelligence update, said that Russia’s shelling in Donbass was increasing, but its progress was hampered by Ukrainian forces as well as other challenges.
Fierce fighting also continued in other parts of Ukraine with heavy clashes around Polohy, a small town in the southern Zaporizhzhia region.
“The men are holding the defensive line, but a massive attack by the enemy is underway,” said Oblast Governor Olexander Staruch.
Elsewhere, the Russian village of Golovchino was hit and a woman was injured, the governor of the Belgorod region, Vyacheslav Gladkov, announced via Telegram.
The region, which the authorities claim has already been shelled several times, borders the embattled Ukrainian region of Kharkiv.
Since Russia’s attack on Ukraine began on February 24, there have been repeated incidents in the region, according to authorities.
Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu warned that Western weapons deliveries to Ukraine were threatening to extend the fighting.
“The growing scope of foreign weapons deliveries shows their determination to convince the regime in Kiev to fight ‘until the last Ukrainian,'” he said.
Meanwhile amid the Russian attacks on eastern Ukraine, no escape corridors have been set up for the embattled localities for the third consecutive day, according to government sources in Kiev, who spoke before the Russian offer of a corridor in Mariupol.
“The intense shelling in the Donbass continues,” Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said on Tuesday. She also accused Russia of failing to provide a humanitarian corridor for civilians in the direction of Berdyansk in the particularly embattled port city of Mariupol, despite requests.
“We continue difficult negotiations on opening humanitarian corridors in the Kherson and Kharkiv regions,” Vereshchuk wrote on Telegram.
Authorities in eastern Ukrainian cities recently complained that they were unable to bring people to safety because of the danger of shelling.
According to the United Nations, about 5 million people have left Ukraine since the war began. Several million are displaced within the country. At the same time, more and more people are returning to the country.
Some 7.1 million people are displaced internally, the UN Security Council was told in a briefing Tuesday.
As fighting continues, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez plans to travel to Kiev to meet Zelensky in the coming days, according to Spanish media. The exact date was not given for security reasons, the reports said, citing government sources.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, meanwhile, promised Ukraine that Berlin will finance arms deliveries from German industry.
“We have asked the German arms industry to tell us which material it can supply in the near future,” Scholz said, adding that Berlin was coordinating with Kiev over what Ukraine needs and would supply the funding needed.
His comments came as the US, Canada, the Netherlands and Belgium promised to supply heavier weapons to Ukraine.
GNA