Pentagon Confirms Ukrainian Missiles Attacked Moskva Warship As Russians Continue Mariupol Siege

The Russian warship that sank in the Black Sea this week was hit by two Ukrainian-made anti-ship missiles, a senior US defense official confirmed on Friday as relentless Russian attacks continued in the east. The southern port city of Mariupol, which withstood weeks of bombing, appeared to be about to fall to Russian ground forces. Ukraine’s satisfaction with the successful sinking of Moskva on Thursday, a cruise missile, was tempered by the situation in Mariupol and the Russian warning that it would intensify the blows in the Ukrainian capital. Explosions were reported outside Kyiv on Friday, with Russian forces saying in a statement that they had fired rockets at a suburban factory producing Ukrainian defense weapons in retaliation for attempts by Ukrainian forces to attack border towns inside Russia. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has continued to pressure Western leaders to step up their efforts to isolate Russia. In a recent telephone conversation with President Biden, Zelensky directly appealed to the United States to designate Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism, one of the strongest and most extensive sanctions on the US arsenal, the Washington Post reported. While Biden told his Ukrainian counterpart that he was willing to look into a series of proposals to put more pressure on Moscow, he did not commit himself to specific actions, according to those familiar with the conversation, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive dialogue. between the two leaders. Even during the Cold War, Washington avoided defining the Soviet Union in this way, despite Moscow’s support for groups considered terrorists during the 1970s and 1980s. Such a move could have a number of consequences, including imposing economic sanctions on dozens of other nations that continue to cooperate with Russia. the freezing of Moscow assets in the United States, including real estate; and the ban on various dual-use exports. The label, which requires a conclusion from the foreign minister, can be applied to any country that has “repeatedly supported acts of international terrorism,” according to the State Department newsletter. The list lists four countries: North Korea, Cuba, Iran and Syria. When Secretary of State Anthony Blinken was asked directly about US support for the designation at a press conference last month, he said: “We are and we will look into everything.” “Our focus first and foremost is to do what we can to help end this war quickly, to stop the suffering of the Ukrainian people,” Blinken told reporters at the State Department. The destruction of the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet by domestic Ukrainian weapons represented a profound symbolic victory for Ukraine and a major blow to Russia’s naval capability. The sinking removed a ship that Moscow will not be able to replace in the Ukrainian theater, according to the US defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in accordance with basic rules set by the Pentagon. Russia has two other similar ships in its navy, but none is based in the Black Sea. Turkey, which controls access to the sea via the Dardanelles and Bosphorus Straits, has said it will only allow ships to pass through those that already have a port. Russia had previously acknowledged the sinking of the cruiser, but said only that it had suffered damage from “heavy storms” and a fire. Russia’s Defense Ministry, meanwhile, claimed a further advance on Mariupol on Friday morning, saying its forces now have full control of the Ilyich Iron and Steel Works plant in the city. Separately, Ukraine’s Azov Battalion is said to be keeping a tight commitment to the Azovstal steel plant, one of the last bastions in the city outside Russian control, where photos from the spot on Friday appeared to show smoke from the heavy industrial area. Both steel plants are owned by Metinvest, a company controlled by billionaire Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine’s richest man. “The city of Mariupol no longer exists,” Pavlo Kyrylenko, governor of the Donetsk region of Ukraine, told CNN. “The city of Mariupol has disappeared from the face of the earth from the Russian Federation.” Earlier in the week, Martin Griffiths, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, described Mariupol as a “hotbed of horror” and reiterated calls for a safe evacuation of the remaining civilians from the city. Its mayor, Vadym Boychenko, said that after mass evacuations and deaths, 50,000 to 70,000 people remained in Mariupol, whose pre-war population was over 400,000. In a video speech Thursday night for the 50th day, Zelensky said the country’s defense since February 24, the day the Russian invasion began, was an “achievement for millions of Ukrainians.” “You have all become heroes. “All Ukrainian men and women who endured and will not give up,” Zelensky said. Zelensky also took the opportunity to reiterate his gratitude to those anonymous world leaders who said they had shown “great generosity” to Ukraine and to continue his criticism of those who “behaved as if they had no power.” Biden announced an additional $ 800 million in US arms shipments to Ukraine as Russia raises troops, military vehicles and equipment on both sides of its border with eastern Ukraine, preparing for an attack in the eastern Donbass region of the country. The Washington Post reported on Thursday that the Russian Foreign Ministry had sent a diplomatic note to the State Department warning of “unforeseen consequences” if the missions did not stop. On Friday, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova confirmed the note, saying similar moves on arms shipments to Ukraine had been sent “to all countries,” Russian Interfax news agency reported. In Kherson, a city about 400 miles south of Kiev that was quickly occupied by Russian forces in the first week after the invasion, at least 824 new graves were dug in a cemetery on the outskirts of the city between February 28 and April 15, according to recent satellite images. analyzed by the non-profit Center for Information Sustainability (CIR) based in London. The CIR is monitoring several graves and cemeteries in areas occupied by Russia or in areas close to Russian forces, said Benjamin Strick, director of research. “It’s scary to think about how [civilians] “He died and what else is happening in these areas,” Strick told The Post. Similarly, the group recently located mass graves in a forest near Chernihiv, a regional capital. New graves continued to be dug even after the city returned to Ukrainian control after weeks of Russian siege, according to images from the Planet Lab. Other allegations of atrocities were more difficult to confirm. Kyiv Regional Police Chief Andriy Nyebytov said on Friday that officials had located more than 900 dead civilians in the region of about 3 million people after Russian ground troops withdrew from the region earlier this month. Even when it withdrew from areas in the north, Russian accumulation continued in and around the Donbas region. Russian forces are occupying territory just outside the city of Kharkiv, northwest of the region, where regional governor Oleh Synegubov claimed on Friday that Russians had bombed a residential area, killing at least 10 people, including a 7-month-old baby, the Kyiv Independent reported. In the same area, the Russian Defense Ministry said it had information that the Ukrainian army was planning to launch a missile attack on refugees gathered at a train station in the city of Lozova and then to blame the Russian army. One week ago, Russia allegedly launched a rocket attack on a train station in the city of Kramatorsk in Donbass, killing dozens of civilians. Russia has denied responsibility for the attack. Ukrainian authorities are planning a provocation in Lozova “similar to the one in Kramatorsk to charge Russian military personnel with so-called war crimes,” Mikhail Mizintsev, head of the National Defense Control Center, told Interfax. New videos and images from the Luhansk region, which is part of Donbass, show burnt bodies among the rubble of a nursing home that was destroyed last month. Regional Governor Serhiy Haidai said on Friday that Russian troops had bombed homes and infrastructure in the area, killing two civilians. In Moscow, meanwhile, the Foreign Ministry warned of “negative consequences” for European security if Sweden and Finland followed suit that they might want to join NATO. “It’s unclear why our Finnish and Swedish neighbors in the Baltic region should be turned into a new frontier of confrontation between the NATO bloc and Russia,” said Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the ministry. “The negative consequences for peace and stability in Northern Europe are obvious.” Finland’s Prime Minister Sanna Marin, who shares an 830-mile land border with Russia, has said her country will make a decision in the coming weeks. She made the remarks following a visit to Sweden on Wednesday, which is considering abandoning decades of military neutrality and applying for NATO membership. Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that Ukraine’s stated desire to join NATO was a threat to Russia’s security and one of the reasons for the invasion. Ukraine has since said it would abandon its hopes of joining the alliance, but wanted “security guarantees” from other countries against Russian aggression in the future. Zakharova acknowledged that “the choice depends on the authorities of Sweden and Finland”. “But they also need to understand the implications of such a step for our bilateral relations and the European security architecture as a whole, which is now in a state of crisis,” Zakharova added. Dmitry Medvedev, Putin’s ally who serves as his vice president …