Posted on 04/17/2022 7:43:02 AM PDT by blam
Pavlo Kyrylenko, Ukraine’s governor over Mariupol, has said Friday that the city of Mariupol has been “wiped off the face of the earth” after weeks of relentless shelling and missile strikes from Russian forces.
“The enemy may seize the land Mariupol used to stand on, but the city of Mariupol has been wiped off the face of the earth by the Russian Federation, by those who will never be able to restore it,” he said. “To restore Mariupol, that is something only Ukraine can do.”
Image: Associated Press
As to the fate of the city, he described that at this point it is “no more” and that in reality the Russians have nothing left to seize. Meanwhile, Reuters is reporting that “Russia gave holdout Ukrainian soldiers an ultimatum to lay down arms on Sunday in the pulverised southeastern port of Mariupol, which Moscow said its forces almost completely controlled in what would be its biggest capture of the nearly two-month war.”
All of this comes just after Ukrainian defense ministry spokesman Oleksandr Motuzyanyk said that for the first time Russia used long-range bombers to attack Ukrainian positions in the port city.
“On April 14, two Russian strategic heavy bombers Tu-95/-160 have launched cruise missiles hitting the territory of Ukraine from Krasnodar Krai of Russian Federation airspace,” he said. “Also for the first time from the start of the armed aggression bombs were dropped by a long-range bombers Tu-22M3. This airstrike took place, hitting Mariupol.”
Earlier last week Mariupol mayor’s estimated that over 10,000 civilians had died over the course of the war which had seen the city on the Sea of Azov attacked and besieged from nearly the start of the invasion.
#MARIUPOL
Footage shows airstrikes from Tu-22M3 long range strategic bomber targeting the Azovstal factory in which the last remains of Azov are holding themselves up. pic.twitter.com/GC7zTs8cTC
— UkraineMaps (@MapsUkraine) April 15, 2022
He had described that dead bodies “carpeted the streets” – though it was impossible for outside observers to verify the high death estimate given.
The AP had reported, “The mayor of the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol said Monday that more than 10,000 civilians have died in the Russian siege of his city, and that the death toll could surpass 20,000…”
On Sunday Bloomberg reports that Russia could be contemplating a naval landing of forces to overwhelming the final holdout Ukrainian troops in and around the city:
Ukraine warned of a possible Russian naval landing operation at Mariupol in addition to new air strikes. Russia called on remaining forces in the besieged city to surrender. Many are thought to be within the massive Azovstal steelworks; Moscow said “foreign mercenaries” are among them, citing intercepted conversations.
#RUSSIA
Footage from earlier today shows Tu-22M3 long range strategic bomber refueling in-air above Vyazma, Russia. pic.twitter.com/Hdm4AZV93Y
— UkraineMaps (@MapsUkraine) April 15, 2022
Recently United Nations officials warned that the true civilian death toll in the country may never be known, that it’s likely significantly higher than current official estimates.
“Really sad to see Joe Bidens War escalate like this. Failed diplomacy... he needed to read Donald Trumps book on how to make a good deal”
B.S.
This is not Biden’s war, it’s Putin’s war and there was no “deal” Biden could have made that Putin would have accepted anymore than there was any deal Trump could make with the dictator in North Korea that he was going to accept.
The only thing that Biden could have told Putin that might have stopped him might have been to tell him that by invading Ukraine Putin could be INSURINGT Ukraine will gain NATO membership.
“Lack of diplomacy. Biden (or his handlers) started this war by talking about NATO and Ukraine. That lit the fuse.”
B.S. This has been coming by Putin’s intent for years, one way or another, Biden or no Biden; a subservient Ukraine has been essential, not to “Russia”, just to Putin’s mindset, and that mindset is a revival of imperial Russia, not a democratic Russia and not a Russia having no need to rule over its immediate neighbors. NATO would not have been expanding if the former Soviet states and Warsaw Pact members did not feel threatened by Putin. Putin’s blaming the expansion of NATO as the problem is just someone blaming something they have caused.
“Seems you can see both sides of an argument objectively.”
I try to. Nuclear war is my professional world.
“Who the hell are “we”? The crowd at Yasenevo lair? Are you getting enough paid for working Sunday?”
I guess you are not an American. Maybe you should stay out of American conversations.
“Civilians in Ukraine are armed and encouraged to fight against uniformed combatants. The biden administration and NATO Countries sending weapons and arms to the ‘resistance fighters’ in the urban streets. Then send in photographers who will document the ‘genocide’ trying to turn this into a global conflict.”
Well said. The globalists want an escalation of this war. The war didn’t have to happen at all. Ukraine and Russia have been trying to discuss and end this but everyone else sticks their noses into it to try to encourage a bigger war.
“As a return favor for Russia helping to steal a election. “
Only a moron who doesn’t know the facts and listens to CNN and MCNBC and Fox thinks Russia had anything to do with stealing an election in the US.
Russia has given those soldiers their last chance. They are going to use air power to complete the destruction there. As for Donbas area the Ukraine military is in a stationary position without maneuver logistics. Putin has had enough of his troops killed in assaults which require a minimum 3-1 offensive ratio for success. Bombers, missiles and artillery are going to finish this conflict.
“... that should never have been allowed to occur...”
You missed that part.
“NATO would not have been expanding if the former Soviet states and Warsaw Pact members did not feel threatened by Putin.”
Wow, you sure like to make stuff up and attribute it as fact. You have no knowledge of the history of the NATO expansion since 1991, yet, you make these wild and childish assertions.
So you don’t think Russia helped biden win in 2020.
“Exactly. We promised Russia and the world that we would not expand NATO after the fall of the USSR”
Did not happen. It is a mostly Putin misinterpretation of events.
Had Putin not become the dictator he is, and had a democratic Russia kept to and expanded on the disarmament agreements the west tried to work out with Putin, former Soviet states and Warsaw pact members would not have felt any need to join NATO, but from early on Putin’s own words showed how much he saw the break up of the Soviet Union as “Russia’s loss” not the loss of the communists running the Soviet union.
Guess I am a natural moron. I don’t watch any of those stations. But I find it funny that biden gets elected and cancels our pipeline and approves putins. Then continues to buy and fund Russia buying 70 million dollars a day in oil from Russia until the ukraine called biden out for it. And at the same time he gives ukraine all the money and weapons and food and water that he can. Using the fact that ukraine needs that 15 billion dollars as a excuse to pass his 1.9 trillion dollar package. And leaving our borders open. Which had nothing to do with it but still pisses me off.
“Wow, you sure like to make stuff up and attribute it as fact. You have no knowledge of the history of the NATO expansion since 1991, yet, you make these wild and childish assertions.”
Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!!! Wow.
They are citizens, you blockhead.
Or do you think elderly Russians are crossing the border and making their way to war-torn Mariupol just to be part of Lancaster's propaganda campaign?
It is a lot easier to ruin a city than to occupy a ruined city. With a little expert advice, the Ukrainians can turn the ruins into a death trap for Russians.
Citizens of your future Russian province, right Putineista?
Yesterday I had a WhatsApp communication from my neighbor here in Mexico who went to Poland. He lived in the Ukraine for 9 years. Also did a ZOOM call to a guy in Albany New York, a Ukrainian pastor who married a Russian wife. Hands down, they say that the Ukraine began falling apart in 2013 with the Obama policies, a State Dept that defied common sense wooing Ukraine into the fold of NATO, knowing it would provoke a war. They said there were DEALS cut, (which Trump tried to clean up and they tried to impeach him). So, YEAH, it is JOE BIDEN’S WAR, he has his name on it and he can add this to the list of I DID THIS...
“Did not happen. It is a mostly Putin misinterpretation of events.”
Sure, because YOU say so. Maybe you shouldn’t believe everything you think and start reading reliable sources. You have the entire history of the world at your fingertips, yet, you’re as ignorant of history as any grade school child.
“Washington D.C., December 12, 2017 – U.S. Secretary of State James Baker’s famous “not one inch eastward” assurance about NATO expansion in his meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990, was part of a cascade of assurances about Soviet security given by Western leaders to Gorbachev and other Soviet officials throughout the process of German unification in 1990 and on into 1991, according to declassified U.S., Soviet, German, British and French documents posted today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University”
“Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!!! Wow.”
You might want to read more and try to insult less. You’re running on nothing but liberal emotions.
“So you don’t think Russia helped biden win in 2020.”
No, and you have no proof of it either. Germany helped, and all the electronic voting machine companies helped, and democrats stuffed ballot boxes in right in front of everyone’s faces. You thinking Russia did it is nothing but CNN talking for you. What a liberal.
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