According to the authorities, a youth was killed in another Russian attack on the southern Ukrainian port of Odessa. A rocket attack destroyed a house where five people were staying, the city administration said on Monday evening. A 15-year-old was killed and a girl injured.
By Thomas Kielhorn
According to reports, the besieged Azovstal plant in the south-eastern Ukrainian port of Mariupol was also heavily bombed and shelled. Images show a thick plume of black smoke. The planned rescue of further civilians from the plant has apparently failed.
“Today the Russian occupiers didn’t give us a chance to get people out of Azovstal,” Donetsk Oblast Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said on Ukrainian television on Monday evening.
According to Kyrylenko, 56 people drove from Mariupol towards the government area. According to the Donetsk separatists, more than 200 people were taken east of the city to Besimenne at the same time. More than 100,000 people are said to live in the severely damaged port city that once had over 400,000 people.
According to the US Department of Defense, the Russian military is making “minimal progress” at best in eastern Ukraine. “The troops are still suffering from poor leadership and control, morale is low in many units, logistics are not optimal, they still have not solved all the logistical problems,” a senior Pentagon official said Monday in Washington.
One observes that the Russian military invades places in the Donbass, declares victory and then withdraws the troops again and leaves the region to the Ukrainians again.
“So there’s been a constant back-and-forth over the past few days,” the Pentagon official said. The Ukrainian military, for example, was able to push the Russians back further from the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, it said. The Russians are clearly in “offensive mode”, but not as successful as expected.
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The Pentagon representative emphasized that all these developments are not only due to a lack of Russian planning. The Ukrainians would also put up really good resistance.
