Russian president declares victory in Mariupol, US calls it “disinformation”

Russian president Vladimir Putin in the biggest battle in Ukraine on thursday, declaring the port city of Mariupol “liberated” after neraly two months of siege.

However, hundreds of fighters and civilians were still isolated inside a large steel plant. Putin ordered his troops to blockade the compound “so that no flies could pass.” The US State Department said in a statement that Ukrainian forces were still in control of Mariupol, and called Putin’s claim that it had liberated the city “further disinformation from their usual scenario”.

Ukraine said the Russian president wanted to avoid a final clash with its forces in the city as it lacked troops to defeat them. President Putin on Thursday ordered his forces not to attack the steel plant in Mariupol.

President Putin told his Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu in a televised address that continuing plans to attack the country would unnecessarily endanger Russian troops. Minister Shoigu told President Putin that there were 2,000 Ukrainian troops at the Azovstal plant, but that the rest of Mariupol, an important port city, had been “liberated.” The fate of civilians in the besieged city has raised concerns in the international community, and Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said on Thursday that four buses were able to evacuate civilians through a humanitarian corridor on Wednesday.

More than 100,000 Ukrainians are believed to be trapped in Mariupol, where 400,000 people lived before Russia began its aggression on February 24. “Conditions there are truly appalling,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told a news conference in Panama on Wednesday. He underlined that efforts to set up humanitarian corridors to allow Mariupol residents to be evacuated “have been thwarted very quickly”. The war in Mariupol is part of a wider Russian offensive in the strategically important Donbas region, where Moscow has increased its military presence./VOA