Ukrainian forces are preparing for new Russian attacks in the southeast, where Moscow’s guns are now trained after its assault on the capital Kyiv was repelled, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Thursday.
Five weeks into an invasion that has blasted cities into wastelands and created more than 4 million refugees, US and European officials said Russian President Vladimir Putin was misled by his generals about the dire performance of Russia’s military.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said it was bringing a convoy of aid to reach the besieged Black Sea port of Mariupol, where tens of thousands of people have been trapped for weeks under bombardment without food, water or heat.
In an early morning video address, Zelensky said Russian troop movements away from Kyiv and the northern city of Chernihiv were “the consequence of our defenders’ work”.
But Ukraine was seeing “a build-up of Russian forces for new strikes on the Donbas and we are preparing for that”, he said, referring to the southeastern region Russia demands Ukraine cede to separatists, where Mariupol is the main port.
Tough resistance by Ukrainian forces has so far prevented Russia from capturing any major city, including Kyiv, which it assaulted with armoured columns from the northwest and east. Moscow says it is scaling back its offensives near the capital and the north and now focusing on “liberating” Donbas.
Mariupol, once a city of 400,000 people, has been destroyed by four weeks of relentless bombardment and siege. The UN believes thousands of people have died there.
Previous attempts to bring aid into besieged parts of the city have failed and civilians have only been able to escape if they have cars. Ukraine said 45 buses were on their way on Thursday and the ICRC said it would evacuate civilians from Friday if the warring parties agreed on safe passage.
In a part of Mariupol now held by Russia, people climbed out of cellars to appear, ghostlike, among the ruins. A man named Pavel placed a bowl and spoon as a tribute on a makeshift grave in a patch of grass, marked with a plain wooden cross. “Our friend. March 16. Driving in a car. A bullet hit him in the throat. He was dead in five minutes,” he said.