Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, May 8: Even as the last of the women, children and elderly civilians have been evacuated from the Azovstal steel mill in the strategic port city of Mariupol after a week-long effort, at least 60 people are feared to have been killed in the Russian bombing of a village school in the eastern Ukrainian region of Luhansk, the regional governor said on Sunday.
Governor Serhiy Gaidai said Russian forces dropped a bomb on Saturday afternoon on the school in Bilohorivka where about 90 people were sheltering, causing a fire that engulfed the building. “The fire was extinguished after nearly four hours, then the rubble was cleared, and, unfortunately, the bodies of two people were found,” Gaidai wrote on the Telegram.
Thirty people were evacuated from the rubble, seven of whom were injured. Sixty people were still buried under the debris but the chances of their survival were considered to be remote. “They may have died under the rubble of buildings,” the governor suspected.
Ukraine and its Western allies have accused Russian forces of targeting civilians in the war, which Moscow denies. In the ruined southeaster port city of Mariupol, scores of civilians have been evacuated from a sprawling steel plant in a week-long operation brokered by the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
“This part of the Mariupol humanitarian operation is over,” Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk wrote on the Telegram. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an address late on Saturday that more than 300 civilians had been rescued from the Azovstal steelworks and authorities would now focus on trying to evacuate the wounded and medics. Other Ukrainian sources have cited different figures. Russian-backed separatists on Saturday reported a total of 176 civilians evacuated from the plant.
The Azovstal plant is a last hold-out for Ukrainian forces in the city now largely controlled by Russia, and many civilians had also taken refuges in its underground shelters. It has become a symbol of resistance to the Russian effort to capture swathes of eastern and southern Ukraine.
Russian forces kept up their barrage of southern Ukraine, hitting the major Black Sea port of Odesa with cruise missiles and bombarding the steelworks up the coast in Mariupol, where Ukrainian fighters remained trapped underground. Moscow was aiming to complete its conquest of Mariupol in time for Victory Day celebrations on May 9. But its forces continued to face dogged resistance from defenders within the bunkers beneath the factory. All Civilians have been evacuated.
Mariupol is key to blocking Ukrainian exports and linking the Crimean Peninsula, seized by Russia in 2014, and parts of the eastern regions of Luhansk and Donetsk that have been controlled by Russia-backed separatists since that same year.
Victory Day is a major event in Russia and Putin will preside on Monday over a parade in Moscow’s Red Square of troops, tanks, rockets and intercontinental ballistic missiles, showing military might even as his forces fight on in Ukraine. His speech could offer clues on the future of the war. Russia’s efforts have been stymied by logistical and equipment problems and high casualties in the face of fierce resistance.
U.S. Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns said on Saturday that Putin was convinced “doubling down” on the conflict would improve the outcome for Russia. “He’s in a frame of mind in which he doesn’t believe he can afford to lose,” Burns said.
The president of the German parliament Baerbel Bas arrived in Kyiv on Sunday to discuss Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with the prime minister and to commemorate victims of World War Two, a German parliament official said on Twitter. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky earlier gave an emotional address for Victory Day, when Europe remembers the formal surrender of Germany to the Allies in World War Two, saying that “evil has returned” to Ukraine, but it wouldn’t be able to escape responsibility.
Ukrainian troops retreated from the eastern Ukrainian city of Popasna, the governor of Luhansk region said on Sunday, confirming previous reports that it had been taken. The head of Russia’s republic of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, had said on Sunday his troops had taken control of most of Popasna.
Luhansk Governor Serhiy Gaidai told Ukraine television that Ukrainian troops had retreated to take up more fortified positions, adding: “Everything was destroyed there.” Russian forces launched a new offensive push in April along most of Ukraine’s eastern flank, with some of most intense attacks and shelling taking place recently around Popasna in the Luhansk region.