Ukraine-Russia, USA: “Mariupol is still disputed”

Mariupol did not fall into Russian hands. Ukrainian forces continue to resist. “Our assessment today is that Mariupol is still disputed and the Ukrainians are still fighting to defend it from the Russian conquest,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said in a briefing with reporters. “You have seen the pictures yourself, you have seen the devastation that Russia’s air raids have inflicted on Mariupol, but we believe that the forces of Ukraine are still fighting,” he added. Kirby stressed that the Russians want to take Mariupol for its “strategic location: it would grant him unlimited land access between the Donbass and the Crimea”. At the same time he stressed the importance for Ukraine for what its port represents “for economic life: it is their city, it is part of their country and they have not given up” to defend it, he concluded. “The situation of Mariupol makes it difficult to pronounce on the number of victims, the city is under siege “, but” at the moment we are talking about 20-22,000 dead in Mariupol, “the governor of the Donetsk region, Pavlo Kyrylenko, told CNN. Yesterday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke of “tens of thousands” of dead in Mariupol. According to Ukrainian media, a unit of Ukrainian Marines of the 36th Brigade in the city broke the siege of Russian forces and managed to connect with the regiment Azov in turn encircled in the port area. At the base of the news, the statements of an officer on “a special operation” that allowed “several hundred marines, including the wounded, to get out” from the Russian encirclement.