Russian shelling of Azovstal plant is ‘not stopping,’ Zelensky says

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has warned that the shelling of the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol is “not stopping” even as “civilians still need to be taken out.” 

“Women, many children remain there,” he said during his nightly address on Thursday. “Just imagine the hell — more than two months of constant shelling, bombing, constant death nearby.”

The Ukrainian authorities are “doing everything to find a solution to save our military heroes” defending Mariupol, Zelensky added. “There are different units. They have many wounded, but they do not give up. They hold position. And we too are trying to find solutions to find safety for these people.”

On Sunday, over 100 civilians were evacuated from the Azovstal steel plant where they spent two months sheltering underground from Russian attacks.

It’s unclear how many civilians remain trapped in the plant, according to a spokesperson for the United Nations Secretary-General, Stephane Dujarric.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said evacuation operations out of the southern city of Mariupol continued Thursday. 

The Ukrainian president did not give a figure for how many people were evacuated on Thursday alone, but said that more than 300 people from the Mariupol area and more than 150 people from the Azovstal steel plant are “already receiving all the help they need” after being evacuated over the last few days. 

This comes after he announced Wednesday that authorities had succeeded in evacuating 344 people from the Mariupol area earlier that day.

Ukrainian authorities have planned a further round of evacuations out of the besieged city of Mariupol on Friday, according to Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk.

“Tomorrow, on May 6, an evacuation from Mariupol to Zaporizhzhia will take place. We are going to gather near the “Port City” shopping mall at about 12pm,” Vereshchuk announced in a Facebook post on Thursday evening.

The Ukrainian government is also pushing ahead with separate efforts to evacuate civilians and soldiers still trapped in the Azovstal steel plant, which Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has hailed as a “the last stronghold of Ukrainian resistance in Mariupol.”

Former US President George W. Bush held a video call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky Thursday morning and posted an image from the video call on Instagram.

View the full Instagram post from Bush here: 

An unnamed man who describes himself as a medic has made an appeal to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to help rescue those still trapped at the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol.

The man says he is a Crimean Tatar and a Muslim. 

“I received a medical education before the invasion, and now I am providing medical assistance to Azovstal. Before the war, I never saw death, I worked on an ambulance, I always helped people as much as I could. But it hurts to watch people die in the arms, just from a lack of antibiotics,” he said.

He said the injured are dying in pain.

Reaching out to Erdoğan, he said: “263 kilometres from you, across the sea, they kill people who are just protecting their land, women and children. We didn’t attack anyone.”

He added, “Turkey and Ukraine have always maintained close relations. You and your country have a great weight in the politics of our region. We don’t know who to write and who to contact. Therefore, I turn to you.”

Medals, road-signs and statues — these are some of the early symbols of Russia’s seizure of parts of southern Ukraine, and especially Mariupol.

The leader of self-styled Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and a senior official in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party awarded medals “For the Liberation of Mariupol” this week.

“The liberation of this city is a joint victory for the armies of the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Russian Federation,” Pushilin posted on his Telegram channel.

A strange statue has also gone up in Mariupol, depicting an elderly woman grasping the Soviet flag.

The Russians have “opened a monument made of shit and sticks to an old lady with a flag on Warriors Liberators Square, which they stubbornly call the Leninist Komsomol,” said Petro Andriushchenko, an adviser to the elected mayor of Mariupol.

He also spoke bitterly about the rising number of Russian officials visiting Mariupol, including the Sergey Kiriyenko, a senior official at the Kremlin, describing them as “curators of Mariupol’s integration into Russia.” 

On the road to Zaporizhzhia from Mariupol — a road most of those trying to escape Mariupol must take — is the town of Tokmak, also under Russian occupation.

The entrance sign to the town has been repainted in the Russian tricolor.

Elsewhere in the south of Ukraine, the ruble is gradually being introduced.

According to a community group on Facebook, government employees in the town of Yakymivka have been told that if they want to be paid in Ukrainian hryvnia “the occupiers will take two-thirds of the salary.”

US First Lady Jill Biden departs Thursday evening on a trip to Romania and Slovakia, where she will spend time with several Ukrainian families displaced by the Russian invasion, according to a release from the East Wing.

Part of the first lady’s intense, four-day schedule of events and meetings and visits includes Mother’s Day activities in Kosice, Slovakia, where Biden will visit a refugee center and two separate schools.  

“Dr. Biden is inspired by the resilience and strength of the Ukrainian people and hopes to communicate that Americans are standing with them,” release stated. 

Biden will also meet with Slovakian President Zuzana Caputova. 

Prior to Slovakia, on Saturday, the first lady will hold a meeting in Bucharest, Romania, with that country’s first lady, Carmen Iohannis, who like Biden is an educator and who has also kept her job as an English teacher at a local college during her tenure. 

Biden’s first stop will be Friday at Mihail Kogălniceanu Air Base in Romania, where she will meet with US and NATO military leadership. She will also visit with troops stationed at the base and participate in a meal service before departing for Bucharest.

The United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) have launched a third operation to evacuate civilians from the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol and the Azovstal steel plant, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the UN Security Council on Thursday.

Guterres said this is the third such operation to evacuate citizens from the area after two other operations. 

“So far, in total, nearly 500 civilians have found long-awaited relief after living under relentless shelling and scarce availability of water, food and sanitation,” Guterres told the UN Security Council.

 A $300 million yacht belonging to Russian oligarch Suleiman Kerimov was seized by Fijian authorities on Thursday at the request of the United States Department of Justice. 

The Fijian authorities acting with the FBI were following a seizure warrant issued by Washington “which found that the Amadea is subject to forfeiture based on probable cause of violations of U.S. law, including the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), money laundering and conspiracy,” according to the statement. 

“Kerimov and those acting on his behalf and for his benefit caused US dollar transactions to be routed through U.S. financial institutions for the support and maintenance of the Amadea.”

The seizure was orchestrated through the Justice Department’s Task Force KleptoCapture, an interagency law enforcement task force run out of the Office of the Deputy Attorney General, focused on enforcing the “the sweeping sanctions, export controls, and economic countermeasures that the United States, along with its foreign allies and partners, has imposed in response to Russia’s unprovoked military invasion of Ukraine.” 

Kerimov has been sanctioned by the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control who designated him as “part of a group of Russian oligarchs who profit from the Russian government through corruption and its malign activity around the globe, including the occupation of Crimea,” the Department of Justice added. 

In doing so, the Treasury also identified him as an official of the Government of the Russian Federation and a member of the Russian Federation Council which is the upper house of Russian parliament. He is the owner of Nafta Moscow, a Russian financial group. Kerimov and his family have an estimated net worth of $9.8 billion, according to the European Union.  

The UK has also sanctioned Kerimov for his decision to vote in favor of laws endorsing President Putin’s decision to recognize the breakaway eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk as independent states.  

He was also placed on the EU’s list of sanctioned individuals for attending on Feb. 24 “a meeting of oligarchs at the Kremlin with Vladimir Putin to discuss the impact of the course of action in the wake of Western sanctions.” The EU contended that Kerimov’s attendance at said meeting shows that he is “a member of the inner circle of oligarchs close to Vladimir Putin and that he is supporting or implementing actions or policies which undermine or threaten the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine, as well as stability and security in Ukraine.” 

US Attorney General Merrick Garland stressed that the US court ruling “should make clear that there is no hiding place for the assets of individuals who violate US laws.” 

“This yacht seizure should tell every corrupt Russian oligarch that they cannot hide – not even in the remotest part of the world. We will use every means of enforcing the sanctions imposed in response to Russia’s unprovoked and unjustified war in Ukraine,” warned US Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco. 

Russian forces have made “some small progress, particularly in the north part of the Donbas,” region of Ukraine, Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby said during a briefing on Thursday.

This small progress is not the progress that the US believes Russian forces “expected to make at this point,” in the region, Kirby added.

“In the Donbas region, we would still assess that Ukrainians are putting up a very stiff resistance. And that the Russians have not made the progress that we believe they expected to make at this point. That’s not to say they haven’t made any progress,” he said.