Photo: Webshot

April 15, 2022   WASHINGTON 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Friday that the country was seeking to break Russia's siege of Mariupol as Russia continued to assault the southern city and threatened to increase its missile strikes on the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv.

In his nightly address to the nation, Zelenskyy said he met with the country's military leaders to discuss the situation in Mariupol, where fighting raged around the city's Illich Steel and Iron Works plant.

"The details cannot be made public now, but we are doing everything we can to save our people," Zelenskyy said.

"The successes of our military on the battlefield are really significant, historically significant. But they are still not enough to clean our land of the occupiers," he said. "We will beat them some more."

The Ukrainian president told CNN earlier Friday that between 2,500 and 3,000 Ukrainian troops had died in the war with Russia and another 10,000 had been injured. He put Russian casualty numbers at 19,000 to 20,000.

Russia said in late March that 1,351 of its soldiers had been killed in Ukraine. A senior NATO military official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said at the time that 7,000 to 15,000 Russian troops had been killed.

Russia used long-range bombers to attack Mariupol on Friday for the first time since its February 24 invasion, Ukraine Defense Ministry spokesman Oleksandr Motuzyanyk said.

"The situation in Mariupol is difficult and hard. Fighting is happening right now, the Russian army is constantly calling on additional units to storm the city, but as of now, the Russians haven't managed to completely capture it,” Motuzyanyk said.

Attacks on Kyiv

In Kyiv, Russia fired missiles into the city early Friday following the sinking of the Russian warship Moskva earlier this week. A senior U.S. defense official Friday backed Ukraine's claims that its forces struck the ship, causing it to sink. Russian officials claimed the ship had experienced a fire.

Russia said its missiles had hit a factory in Kyiv and warned of more missile attacks on the city. Russia's Defense Ministry said Friday that the increased strikes were in response to Ukraine's alleged airstrikes on residential buildings inside Russia, just over the border in the Bryansk region. Ukrainian officials have not confirmed striking targets in Russia.

Also in the Kyiv region, more than 900 bodies of civilians have been discovered following the withdrawal of Russian forces, according to the regional police chief, who spoke Friday at a briefing.

Andriy Nebytov said that most of the victims were in Bucha, where 350 corpses were discovered, and that more bodies were being found each day.

Russia pulled its troops out of northern Ukraine this month.

Elsewhere, Russian forces were concentrating on seizing the cities of Rubizhne and Popasna, in Ukraine's east. Also in the region, Russian shelling hit a residential area in Kharkiv, killing seven people, including a small child, and injuring 34 others, the regional governor said Friday.

Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said 2,864 people were evacuated from conflict areas Friday, including 363 from Mariupol, 370 from the Luhansk region in the east, and 2,131 people from cities in the Zaporizhzhia region.

Russia expels EU diplomats

Tensions between Russia and the European Union increased Friday as Russia expelled 18 EU diplomats. The move came in retaliation for Brussels' decision earlier this month to expel 19 Russians, members of the Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the EU in Brussels, for "engaging in activities contrary to their diplomatic status."

Russia's Foreign Ministry said in its statement it had summoned EU Ambassador to Russia Markus Ederer and handed him a note of protest. The EU diplomats must leave Russia as soon as possible, the ministry added.

The EU mission to Russia called the decision by the Russian authorities “a retaliatory step."

Officials in Germany said the government was planning to spend an additional $2 billion on military equipment, with much of it going to help Ukraine.

The Washington Post reported Friday that Moscow this week sent a formal diplomatic communique to the U.S. warning that shipments of the “most sensitive” weapons systems to Ukraine were “adding fuel” to the war and said that could result in “unpredictable consequences.”

The Post said it had reviewed a copy of the diplomatic note, which came as U.S. President Joe Biden approved a major expansion of the military hardware being provided.

In his interview with CNN, Zelenskyy echoed the concerns of CIA Director William Burns, who said that Russia, “out of desperation,” could consider using tactical or low-yield nuclear weapons. Zelenskyy said the whole world should be worrying.

“For them,” meaning Russian leader Vladimir Putin and the Russian military, “life of people is nothing,” Zelenskyy said.

Donbas targeted

After withdrawing from northern Ukraine, Russia said that its main war aim was capturing the Donbas, an eastern region of two provinces already partly held by Russian-backed separatists, and that it wanted Kyiv to cede.

Russia has amassed thousands of troops in the east for what Ukraine expects will be a major assault.

Moscow says it hopes to seize all of the southeastern city of Mariupol soon, which would make it the first large city it has captured.

The Black Sea port, home to 400,000 people before the war, has been reduced to rubble by seven weeks of siege and bombardment, with tens of thousands of people trapped inside.

Thousands of civilians have died there, Ukrainian officials said.

Russia initially described its aims as disarming Ukraine and defeating nationalists there. Kyiv and its Western allies say those are bogus justifications for an unprovoked war of aggression that has driven a quarter of Ukraine's 44 million people from their homes.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.