INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Russian forces launched a major assault Tuesday on the Azovstal steel plant, the last holdout of Ukrainian forces in the devastated southern
port city of Mariupol, as 101 civilians who had been trapped in the site for weeks were finally brought to safety."We are so thankful for
There was a moment we lost hope, we thought everyone forgot about us," evacuee Anna Zaitseva told AFP after arriving in the Ukrainian-held
city of Zaporizhzhia, her six-month-old baby in her arms.The United Nations and Red Cross said 101 people were evacuated from the maze of
everything we can to get all our people out of Mariupol, out of Azovstal," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video
Zaporizhzhia from the city of Mangush, outside Mariupol, said Osnat Lubrani, the UN's Humanitarian coordinator for Ukraine.She warned
there "may be more civilians who remain trapped" in Azovstal, saying the UN was ready to return to bring them to safety.But Russian forces
on Tuesday resumed attacks on the steel plant, where the Ukrainian fighters are making their last stand in Mariupol after almost constant
bombardment since Moscow's invasion on Feb
24.It was one of a series of assaults Tuesday across Ukraine, where authorities said 21 civilians were killed in the eastern Donetsk
region.'We don't live, we survive'Sviatoslav Palamar, deputy commander of Ukraine's Azov military unit, said Russia was assaulting the
Azovstal plant with armored vehicles and tanks and was also attempting to bring "a large number" of infantry by boat.Zelensky said that the
Russians' latest strikes showed that they don't have "some kind of military goal.""They cannot overpower Ukraine
But what is within their power still is to set fire to a children's amusement park..
or to blow up a bridge or a grain storage," Zelensky said.The Russian army confirmed its forces and pro-Moscow separatists were targeting
Azovstal with artillery and planes, accusing Azov members and other Ukrainian troops of using a pause in fighting to take up combat
positions.The residents of Mariupol, a strategic port in southern Ukraine, have been living in desperate conditions without food, water and
cut off from communications from the outside world.The city is now largely calm, AFP journalists saw on a recent press tour organized by
Russian forces, with the remaining locals emerging from hiding to a ruined city.Daily life is dominated by the hunt for the most basic of
essentials, they say."We don't live, we survive," said Irina, a 30-year-old video game designer, as she gathered food and water from an aid
the worst refugee crisis in Europe since World War II.Western countries have backed Ukraine with cash and weapons while imposing
unprecedented sanctions against Russia in a so far failed bid to make President Vladimir Putin pull back.British Prime Minister Boris
Johnson on Tuesday pledged another 300 million pounds ($376 million) in military aid, as he became the first foreign leader to address
Ukraine's parliament since the conflict began.Speaking via videolink, the premier evoked Britain's fight against the Nazis in World War
II in hailing Kyiv's resistence as its "finest hour," and vowed to help ensure "no one will ever dare to attack you again."The European
Commission was meanwhile set Tuesday to put to member states a new package of measures, including a phased-out ban on Russian oil, officials
said.The package will also target Russia's largest bank, Sberbank, which will be excluded from the global banking communications system
SWIFT.Deadly factory strikeIn the early weeks of the invasion, Russian forces encircled Ukraine's capital Kyiv but they have shifted to
the east, including largely Russian-speaking areas, and the south.In Donetsk, the regional governor said that 10 of the 21 dead Tuesday were
killed in shelling of the Avdiivka coke plant, one of the largest in Europe.In the town of Lyman, Ukrainian soldiers told AFP they have
rigged with explosives a railway bridge over the Donets river and were waiting for orders to blow it up."It's never easy to destroy one of
your own pieces of infrastructure
Engineer."Russia's defense ministry meanwhile said its forces had struck a logistics center at a military airfield in the region around
the Black Sea port of Odessa, used for the delivery of foreign-made weapons.Storage facilities containing Turkey's Bayraktar drones as
well as missiles and ammunition from the United States and Europe have been destroyed, it said.A rocket strike also knocked out power in
part of Lviv, the western city near Poland that has turned into a haven due to its comparative calm, Mayor Andriy Sadovy said on
Russian soldiers for suspected atrocities in the town of Bucha, near Kyiv.But in a phone call with French President Emmanuel Macron on
Tuesday, Putin accused Ukrainian forces of committing war crimes and claimed the EU was "ignoring" them, according to the Kremlin.The United
States warned on Monday that Moscow was preparing imminently to annex the eastern regions of Luhansk and Donetsk, planning to "engineer
referenda" to join Russia sometime in mid-May.Pro-Russian separatists in the two regions declared independence in 2014, but Moscow has so
