Russia plans to annex much of eastern Ukraine later this month, a senior U.S. official warned, and the Mariupol steel mill that is the city’s last stronghold of resistance came under renewed assault a day after the first evacuation of civilians from the plant.
Michael Carpenter, U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said Monday that the U.S. believes the Kremlin also will recognize the southern city of Kherson as an independent republic. Neither move would be recognized by the United States or its allies, he said.
Russia is planning to hold sham referendums in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions that would “try to add a veneer of democratic or electoral legitimacy” and attach the entities to Russia, Carpenter said. He also said there were signs that Russia would engineer an independence vote in Kherson.
Mayors and local legislators there have been abducted, internet and cellphone service has been severed and a Russian school curriculum will soon be imposed, Carpenter said. Ukraine’s government says Russia has introduced its ruble as currency there.
More than 100 people — including elderly women and mothers with small children — left Mariupol’s rubble-strewn Azovstal steelworks Sunday and set out in buses and ambulances for the Ukrainian-controlled city of Zaporizhzhia, about 140 miles (230 kilometers) to the northwest. Mariupol Deputy Mayor Sergei Orlov told the BBC that the evacuees were making slow progress.
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Authorities gave no explanation for the delay.
At least some of the civilians were apparently taken to a village controlled by Russia-backed separatists. The Russian military said some chose to stay in separatist areas, while dozens left for Ukrainian-held territory.
In the past, Ukraine has accused Moscow’s troops of taking civilians against their will to Russia or Russian-controlled areas. The Kremlin has denied it.
The Russian bombardment of the sprawling plant by air, tank and ship resumed after the partial evacuation, Ukraine’s Azov Battalion, which is helping to defend the mill, said on the Telegram messaging app.
Read more: ABC
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