Russian President Vladimir Putin has claimed victory in the siege of Mariupol as his military forces have successfully forced the remaining Ukrainian troops in the area to hold up inside a giant steelworks facility.
However, the United States has disputed the Russian president's claims and argued that Ukrainian forces still held ground in the city. On the other hand, Putin ordered his troops to blockade the steel complex where Ukrainians, both military and civilians, were told earlier to either surrender or die.
Putin Claims Victory in Mariupol
Ukrainian authorities said that Putin wanted to avoid a final clash between the two forces in Mariupol as he lacked enough manpower to complete a takeover of the region. However, Ukrainian officials also appealed for assistance to evacuate civilians and wounded soldiers stranded in the area.
At the Kremlin, Putin held a televised meeting where he congratulated his defense minister and Russian forces for having "successfully completed the combat effort to liberate Mariupol." He added that it was unnecessary to siege the industrial zone that contained the Azovstal steel plant, as per Reuters.
One senior United States defense official said that the fighting in the region and in the eastern Donbas region was still ongoing. They added that United States President Joe Biden announced a flight carrying more military aid will begin arriving in Ukraine this weekend.
On Wednesday, Russian and Ukrainian authorities were trying to negotiate a deal to form a humanitarian corridor to evacuate civilians, but it fell through. There were only four buses to leave Mariupol despite officials hoping to evacuate thousands of people.
Residents have been evacuating the Donbas region due to Russian forces massing nearby to try and escape the threat to their lives. This includes Sergei Protsenko, a restauranteur from Kherson, which is near the front lines of the war in southern Ukraine.
Situation Inside the City
According to NPR, he had crossed nine different Russian-held checkpoints to make it into Ukrainian-held territory and said that he was told to strip down to see if he had any tattoos related to the Ukrainian military. Making it into Odesa, Protsenko is now able to smoke a cigarette and look out into the sea, saying he feels a huge sense of relief.
Both sides would benefit greatly from having total control of Mariupol as it is the last pocket of serious resistance in the land bridge that the Kremlin has created between the regions that it already controls in the Donbas region in the east and the Crimean Peninsula in the south.
Furthermore, Mariupol is home to much of Ukraine's Azov Battalion, filled with far-right fighters who give a sheen of credibility to Putin's false claim that Ukraine is run by Nazis and that his plan with the invasion was to "denazify" the nation.
The fight for the city also illustrates both the brutality of the Russian war and Putin's struggles of accomplishing his goals. For more than a month, Russian troops have been sieging Mariupol, causing much of the area to lie in ruins with satellite images showing a growing mass grave on the outskirts, the New York Times reported.
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