Day 70 Summary
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgro...ment-may-4
The biggest event today was multiple reports of the Russians successfully fighting their way into the Azovstal steel plant. (They've been trying for weeks but have been repelled each time.) Communications with the Ukrainian defenders has reportedly been lost, so nobody is sure what is happening in there. Presumably the Russians are trying to clear out the maze of tunnels under the plant where the Ukrainians, both regular soldiers, volunteer units and the surviving male civilians of the city of Mariupol (about 2,000 in total its believed) have been sheltering from almost constant bombing and shelling. (There are reportedly hundreds of wounded with little or no medical care available.) Hopefully what's happening will become clearer in a day or so. And hopefully the loss of life isn't too high. (I'm imagining those last Ukrainians fighting to the last man.)
I still think that this is one of those iconic battles that people will remember for generations, Ukraine's Stalingrad. It would make a good subject for a movie (and probably would at some point, if they still made war movies).
It appears that the Russians really want to fully control Mariupol by May 9, their Victory Day that comemorates the final surrender of Germany in World War II. The Russian commanders in Mariupol may have been ordered to make it happen no matter what the cost in Russian soldiers lives. Thousands of people are probably dying as I write this. Each Ukrainian will likely take at least one Russian with him.
First Deputy Head of the Russian Presidential Administration Sergey Kiriyenko has arrived in Mariupol and has apparently been appointed as some kind of Viceroy for the conquered bits of Ukraine. Reports are that surviving Mariupol civilians are being forced to clear main streets of rubble in exchange for food, in preparation for some big Russian Victory Day parade in which the liberation of the Russian occupied parts of Ukraine will be announced. Russian journalists are gathering in Mariupol to cover it. But it's expected that the war will continue after that and it won't mean the end of Russian offensive operations.
Other than that, Russia's grand offensive remains stalled.
Around Kharkiv (Ukraine's second largest city) Ukrainian forces reported no new advances today as they digest the suburbs and nearby villages they've retaken in recent days. The Russians responded by shelling the Kharkiv outskirts, as they've been doing since the start of the war.
The attempt to stab south from Izium appears to have failed, despite the massing of tens of thousands of Russian troops there.
The Russians seem to be making better, if still very slow, progress near Lyman. They have taken Yampil and several other small villages. But they are still a long ways from encircling the Ukrainian army in the east which seems to have been their objective. American military observers increasingly think they can't do it.
The Ukrainians look to me to be wearing down in the area of Severodonetsk, but given the poor performance of the Russian army, they remain strong enough to prevent Russian advances. The Russians continue to tighten their grip on Rubizhne though, and appear to have surrounded some of the Ukrainian defenders in that small industrial city.
There hasn't been much movement in the Kherson-Mykolaiv front. Each side probes into rural areas and claims small villages and crossroads, but nothing of substance. The Ukrainians continue to worry about possible Russian movements towards Mykolaiv but it hasn't happened yet. It's possible that's the Russians' intention, to pin the Ukrainians down in the southwest.
And the Ukrainians are dismissing the Transnistrian threat. The Russians supposely had 1,500 troops there, but the Ukrainians think that it's closer to 300 combat capable soldiers, short on supplies. Ukrainian border guards are erecting concrete barriers on the roads between Ukraine and Transnistria.
A much more serious threat is the fact that Belarus has started big troop movements of its forces north of western Ukraine. It's unclear if the Belarussians have decided to enter the war (they say it's just maneuvers), but Ukraine says that it is ready for whatever they do. (Which raises the question whether NATO would be willing to enter far western Ukraine to fight Belarus even if it doesn't want to fight nuclear armed Russia. If that happened, Belarus would find its butt well and thoroughly kicked.)
And the Russians have redoubled their cruise missile attacks on western Ukraine. Targets seem to be railroads and electrical power infrastructure. Some western Ukrainian cities have reported blackouts. It's believed that the Russians are trying to disrupt increased flows of military and other aid from Europe and the US. Or maybe they are trying to soften up the area before the Belarussians go in.
![[Image: 2022_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine.svg]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4f/2022_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine.svg)