March 19, 2022, 7:30 a.m. ET
March 19, 2022, 7:30 a.m. ET
The desperate race to rescue any survivors entombed for a third night in the ruins of a theater in the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol was complicated on Saturday by raging street battles, Russian artillery barrages and the destruction of the city’s basic services.
Russia’s defense ministry said on Friday that it was “tightening the noose” around the city. The Ukrainian government said that its forces were outgunned, that attempts to provide air support had failed and that it had “temporarily” lost contact with officials in Mariupol.
Yet the Ukrainian forces defending the city have refused to surrender, even as tank battles and street fighting were reported in what remains of the city center.
Video shared by the Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov showed soldiers purportedly from the Russian region in the Caucasus in Mariupol. “The Chechen security forces delight us with new cadres of captured Ukronazis,” Mr. Kadyrov said in a caption for the video, using a derogatory term for those who support the Ukrainian Army, whom President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has tried to portray as “Nazis.” The New York Times has not independently verified the video’s contents.
Russia’s wars in Chechnya — where Moscow’s artillery and air forces turned city blocks to rubble and its ground troops massacred civilians in what was many viewed as a deliberate campaign to terrorize the population into submission — have been widely seen as a prelude to the campaign of destruction in Ukraine.
“One by one, the areas are cleared, and soon it will reach you,” Mr. Kadyrov continued, addressing his remarks to Ukrainians inside the city. “Either you voluntarily lay down your arms and accept the punishment you deserve, or we will knock it out of your hands and take punitive measures ourselves.”
Local officials have tallied more than 2,500 deaths in the siege of Mariupol, although the true number can’t be counted because of the relentless shelling.
Roughly 9,000 people have escaped the city in recent days, President Volydymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said in an overnight address to the nation. But hundreds of thousands remain trapped with no heat or water in a wasteland of bombed-out buildings where dead bodies dot the streets. The surrounding roads are mined, and the port is blockaded.
It is one of dozens of Ukrainian towns and cities now in ruins, setting off the worst humanitarian catastrophe in Europe since the end of World War II.
The attack on the theater in Mariupol has become emblematic of a war in which civilians have come under withering assault, with scores of schools, hospitals and residential buildings destroyed by Russian bombardments. The theater struck on Wednesday was clearly labeled as a haven for families, with satellite imagery showing the word children spelled out on the ground outside in a way that was visible to any planes flying overhead.
As many as 1,300 people were believed to have been sheltering at the theater from the fighting. Ukrainian officials said on Friday that 130 people had been rescued.
If there are further survivors, time is running out after three nights trapped in the wreckage.
