Ukraine fighting rages on multiple fronts

RUSSIA,UKRAINE: Fighting raged on multiple fronts in Ukraine on Saturday, with intense combat in the besieged port city of Mariupol site of some of the war’s greatest suffering. Ukrainian officials say their forces there are battling the Russians over the Azovstal steel plant, one of the biggest in Europe.

The situation grew increasingly dire in the port city of Mariupol, where Russian forces pushed deeper Saturday in an area already experiencing what onlookers describe as a humanitarian crisis.The Russian military reported on Saturday that it has used its latest hypersonic missile for the first time in combat. A spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry, Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov, said Kinzhal missiles destroyed an underground warehouse storing Ukrainian missiles and aviation ammunition in the western Ivano-Frankivsk region of Ukraine.

“Children, elderly people are dying. The city is destroyed and it is wiped off the face of the earth,” Mariupol police officer Michail Vershnin said in a video filmed Friday that was authenticated by The Associated Press.Fighting shut down the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, Vadym Denysenko, adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister, said Saturday, while other officials said forces that could help Ukraine defend Mariupol were facing massive resistance.

“There is currently no military solution to Mariupol,” Oleksiy Arestovych, adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said. “That is not only my opinion, that is the opinion of the military.”

Meanwhile, Some Syrian paramilitary fighters say they are ready to deploy to Ukraine to fight in support of their ally Russia but have not yet received instructions to go, two of their commanders told Reuters.

Nabil Abdallah, a commander in the paramilitary National Defence Forces (NDF), said he was ready to use expertise in urban combat gained during the Syrian war to aid Russia, speaking to Reuters by phone from the Syrian town of Suqaylabiyah.

“Once we get instructions from the Syrian and Russian leadership, we will fight this righteous war,” Abdallah said on March 14, four days after President Vladimir Putin gave a green light for 16,000 volunteers from the Middle East to deploy in Ukraine.

“We don’t fear this war and are ready for it once instructions come to go and join. We will show them what they never saw … We will wage street wars and (apply) tactics we acquired during our battles that defeated the terrorists in Syria,” he added.

Syria is Russia’s closest ally in the Middle East, and Moscow’s intervention in the Syrian war in 2015 proved decisive in helping President Bashar al-Assad defeat rebel forces in enclaves across much of the country.

The NDF emerged from pro-Assad militias early in the Syrian war and fought in offensives that captured some of the rebel held enclaves, with Russian air support.

– THE HINDUSTAN TIMES, NDTV