Odessa in Crosshairs, Mariupol Reels, Lavrov Digs in Heels

ATHENS — The Russians are coming to Odessa, and it’s not for Sunday brunch. Ukraine’s military headquarters said on Thursday that Russia was sending four amphibious assault ships to land troops near the city of 1 million, according to a Bloomberg report that added images posted on social media purporting to show the landing craft and their escort standing off the southern coast of Crimea, opposite the Odessa coastline. The tiny but strategic Snake Island, situated south of Odessa in the Black Sea, came under Russian amphibious assault in the first days of the Ukraine invasion. Meanwhile, an Eastern European news agency, NEXTA, tweeted Thursday that an Estonian cargo ship sank off the coast of the Ukrainian port city, apparently after hitting a mine. The Daily Mail identified the ship as The Helt and reported four crew members were missing. Sky News estimates that more than 2,000 civilians have so far died in the week since Russia began its unprovoked attack on Ukraine. Staying in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, has become an increasingly perilous undertaking for many in recent days even as a huge Russian convoy remains outside the city. A 25-year-old Jewish soccer player, Dmytro Martynenko, and his mother were killed by Russian shelling at their home in Kiev, as Ynet reports. Martynenko had been looking forward to joining an Israeli soccer team this summer. Underscoring the danger, the BBC posted footage of CBS News correspondent Charlie D’Agata ducking for cover as an explosion lit up the Kiev sky behind him just as he wrapped up a live report. In Enerhodar, on the Dnieper River about equidistant between Odessa and Mariupol, AP reported the mayor said Thursday that Ukrainian forces were battling Russian troops for control of the city, which has Europe’s largest nuclear plant.As rockets fly, so does the rhetoric — taking a sometimes surreal turn.London’s Daily Express and other media report on another rant from Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, in which he claimed that “Americans have got Europe under their control” and compared America to both Hitler (yikes) and Napoleon (mon dieu). He also said Ukrainian forces included “Nazi battalions” and accused France’s foreign minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, of acting like a peacock. He also deflected blame from some of the recent escalatory rhetoric: a Sky News report noted that Mr. Lavrov reminded a reporter that it was President Biden who, when replying to a question about whether there was an alternative to what Mr. Lavrov characterized as “these sanctions from hell,” said, “The only alternative is World War III.”With Kherson now captured, the daily hell of war was on full display in Mariupol, where the Russians have been targeting civilian infrastructure. According to Ukrinform, a Ukrainian website, the Mariupol Town Council issued a Facebook post that reads in part: “Russian fascists are creating a humanitarian catastrophe in Mariupol! These bastards have found no other way to break us. They hinder the supply and recovery of electricity, water, and heat. They also damaged the railway service. Bridges were destroyed, trains were smashed so that we would not be able to evacuate women, children, and elderly people from Mariupol. They hinder the supply of food, create a blockade as once in former Leningrad.”The site also quotes the mayor of Mariupol, Vadym Boychenko, thusly: ”We are being destroyed as a nation. This is the genocide of the Ukrainian people. These hypocrites came allegedly to ‘save’ Russian-speaking citizens of Mariupol and the region. And they arranged the extermination of Ukrainians – Mariupol residents of Russian, Ukrainian, Greek, and other origins.” The mayor called the Russian soldiers “Putin’s horde troops.”As the war drags on, the focus is on Kiev, the capital and ultimate “get” for Russia’s rapacious ruler. Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat runs a story about President Putin’s motives that quotes a St. Petersburg lawyer as saying, “Putin has the inner assurance that he is doing the right thing and will not back down until Kiev is conquered.” The Moscow Times, a rare voice in independent media in the Russian capital, appears to validate that assertion and then some: “Macron Believes ‘The Worst Is to Come’ in Ukraine After Putin Call,” the newspaper reported as the sun set over Eastern Europe Thursday. Running a fresh dispatch from Agence France-Presse, the story cites an aide to the French president who believes that following the 90-minute phone call “the worst is to come” in Ukraine — and that Vladimir Putin appears intent on seizing “the whole” of the country.

Odessa in Crosshairs, Mariupol Reels, Lavrov Digs in Heels

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