Ukrainians plead for Mariupol rescue; Russian advance crawls
KHARKIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian forces fought Saturday to hold off a Russian advance aimed at capturing an eastern industrial region along with Ukraine’s last holdout in the southern city of Mariupol, where fighters and civilians hiding under a heavily damaged steel mill endure agonizing conditions.
The United Nations continued trying to broker an evacuation of civilians from the sprawling Soviet-era plant and other bombed-out ruins of Mariupol, a port city which Russia has sought to capture and subjected to heavy bombardment since it invaded Ukraine more than nine weeks ago.
There are up to 1,000 civilians at the Azovstal steelworks, according to Ukrainian officials, who have not said how many fighters remained in the only part of Mariupol not occupied by Russian forces. The Russians put the number of Ukrainian soldiers at the plant at about 2,000.
Video and images shared with The Associated Press by two Ukrainian women who…
