World News

By Max Hunder and Natalia Zinets

KYIV, Ukraine (Reuters) -Moscow said on Thursday that 1,730 Ukrainian fighters had surrendered in Mariupol over three days, including 771 in the past 24 hours, claiming a surrender on a far bigger scale than Kyiv has acknowledged since ordering its garrison to stand down.

The ultimate outcome of Europe’s bloodiest battle for decades remained publicly unresolved, with no confirmation of the fate of the hundreds of Ukrainian troops who had held out in a vast steelworks at the end of a near three-month siege.

Ukraine, which says it aims to secure a prisoner swap, has declined to say how many were inside the plant or comment on the fate of the rest since confirming that just over 250 had surrendered in the initial hours after it ordered them to yield.

The leader of Russian-backed separatists in control of the area said nearly half of the fighters remained inside the steelworks, where underground bunkers and tunnels had protected them from weeks of Russian bombardment.

“More than a half have already left – more than half have laid down their arms,” Denis Pushilin told the Solovyov Live internet television channel. “Let them surrender, let them live, let them honestly face the charges for all their crimes.”

The wounded had been given medical treatment while those who were fit had been taken to a penal colony and were being treated well, he said.

Ukrainian officials say they cannot comment publicly on the fate of the fighters, as negotiations are under way behind the scenes to rescue them.

“The state is making utmost efforts to carry out the rescue of our service personnel,” military spokesman Oleksandr Motuzaynik told a news conference. “Any information to the public could endanger that process.”

Russia denies that it has agreed to a prisoner swap for them. Many of the Azovstal defenders belong to a Ukrainian unit with far-right origins, the Azov Regiment, which Moscow calls Nazis and says must be prosecuted for crimes. Ukraine calls them national heroes.

The end of fighting in Mariupol, the biggest city Russia has captured so far, allows Russian President Vladimir Putin to claim a rare victory in the invasion it began on Feb. 24. It gives Russia complete control of the Sea of Azov and an unbroken stretch of territory along eastern and southern Ukraine.

Ukraine says tens of thousands of civilians died in nearly three months of Russian siege and bombardment that lay the city to waste. The Red Cross and United Nations say the true toll is uncounted but at least in the thousands, making it the bloodiest battle in Europe at least since the Chechnya and Balkan wars of the 1990s.

Moscow denies targeting civilians in its “special military operation” to disarm and “de-Nazify” its neighbour. Ukraine and the West say Russian forces have killed many thousands of civilians in an unprovoked war of aggression.

DONBAS ATTACKS

Russian forces were driven out of northern Ukraine and the area around the capital at the end of March, and were pushed away from the second largest city Kharkiv this month.

In a sign of the return of normal life to the capital, the United States reopened its embassy in Kyiv on Wednesday.

“The Ukrainian people… have defended their homeland in the face of Russia’s unconscionable invasion, and, as a result, the Stars and Stripes are flying over the Embassy once again,” said U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

But Russia is still pressing its main offensive using massed artillery and armour, trying to capture more territory in the eastern Donbas, comprised of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, which Moscow claims on behalf of separatists.

Ukraine’s general staff said on Thursday Russia’s attacks were focused on Donetsk. Russian forces “suffered significant losses” around Slovyansk to the north of Donetsk.

Police said on Telegram on Thursday that two children had been killed in the Donetsk city of Lyman. Serhiy Gaidai, governor of neighbouring Luhansk region, said four people had been killed and three wounded in shelling of the frontline city of Sievierodonetsk.

In Russia, the regional governor of the Kursk border region accused Ukrainian forces of shelling a border village, killing at least one civilian. Both sides have accused each other of cross border shelling for weeks.

Reuters was unable to verify the reports.

(Reporting by Natalia Zinets and Max Hunder in Kyiv and a Reuters journalist in Mariupol; Additional reporting by Reuters bureaux; Writing by Peter Graff and Stephen Coates; Editing by Richard Pullin and Nick Macfie)

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SANTIAGO (Reuters) – Chile’s top court on Wednesday turned down appeals filed by communities and environmentalists against the controversial Dominga mining project, saying a final decision needs input from President Gabriel Boric’s administration.

Last year, environmentalists and surrounding communities appealed a ruling from a lower court that tossed out a decision by a regulator that denied the company permits.

In its ruling, the Third Chamber of the Supreme Court said that it was turning down the appeals because it “determined that there is no final judgment that can be reviewed by this court,” adding that the final decision on the environmental evaluation is “pending a resolution from the administrative authority.”

That authority is the committee of ministers, made up of the mining, agriculture, energy, economy, health ministers and is chaired environment minister.

In his first speech as president-elect in December, Boric voiced opposition to projects that “destroy” the country, such as Dominga, which seeks to annually produce 12 million tonnes of iron concentrate and 150,000 tonnes of copper concentrate.

An environmental evaluation commission endorsed the $2.5 billion project last year, but it has been delayed for years amid strong opposition from environmental and social groups that say it would cause serious environmental damage to the region.

OceanaChile, an environmental group dedicated to protecting the ocean, has said the project could hurt the Humboldt archipelago off Chile’s coast, endangering its species and biodiversity.

“Our trust is in that the Committee of Ministers will consider all the scientific information that backs why Dominga is unviable and the Humboldt archipelago must be protected permanently,” it said in a tweet responding to the decision.

Andes Iron, the company in charge of the Dominga project, issued a statement saying it welcomed the court’s decision and added that “every time the Dominga project has undergone technical evaluations we have received favorable pronouncements.”

The project has spanned multiple administrations and sparked controversies for former presidents Michelle Bachelet and Sebastian Pinera. Pinera faced and survived an impeachment vote after details of possible irregularities linked to the Dominga project were revealed in the Pandora Papers leak.

(Report by Natalia Ramos; Additional reporting by Fabian Cambero and Alexander Villegas; Editing by Aurora Ellis)

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LONDON (Reuters) – Tamils who resettled in Britain after fleeing the Sri Lankan civil war held a vigil in London on Wednesday, with some likening the island nation’s current economic crisis to the conditions they faced during the decades-long conflict.

The gathering of Tamils seeking justice for those from their community who were killed in the South Asian country during the war, coincided with Sri Lanka’s worst economic crisis since its independence in 1948 that has forced out its prime minister.

“The current crisis in Colombo reminds me of our struggles during the war. Shortage of fuel, food, medicine – the Tamil-dominated parts of Sri Lanka faced the same issues then as what the entire nation is facing today,” Thanikai, 42, who came to Britain eight years ago, told Reuters.

He is amongst the hundreds of thousands of Tamils who fled the conflict, which ended in May 2009 with the Sri Lankan government defeating the Tamil Tiger rebels.

Human rights groups have since accused the country’s military of killing civilians towards the end of the war, in which the rebels fought for a separate state for the Tamil minority.

“We need justice for all the people who were killed,” Thanikai said.

The United Nations has accused both sides of war crimes and has been given a mandate to collect evidence.

The U.N. has also warned the failure of Sri Lanka to address past violations has significantly heightened the risk of human rights violations being repeated.

“My parents and friends are still in Sri Lanka but I have been too scared to go back,” said Elilarasi Manoharan, who attended the peaceful demonstration in Trafalgar Square to mark the 13th anniversary of the end of the war.

“But now with the economic crisis and the changes we are seeing, maybe if the Sri Lankan system changes it will open up doors for us to be able to visit our loved ones.”

(Reporting by Muvija M, editing by Kylie MacLellan and Richard Pullin)

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By Guy Faulconbridge

LONDON (Reuters) -Russia on Wednesday said it was using a new generation of powerful lasers in Ukraine to burn up drones, deploying some of Moscow’s secret weapons to counter a flood of Western arms.

Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2018 unveiled an intercontinental ballistic missile, underwater nuclear drones, a supersonic weapon and a laser weapon.

Little is known about the specifics of the new laser. Putin mentioned one called Peresvet, named after a medieval Orthodox warrior monk Alexander Peresvet who perished in mortal combat.

Yury Borisov, the deputy prime minister in charge of military development, told a conference in Moscow that Peresvet was already being widely deployed and it could blind satellites up to 1,500 km above Earth.

He said there were already more powerful systems than Peresvet that could burn up drones and other equipment. Borisov cited a test on Tuesday which he said had burned up a drone 5 km away within five seconds.

“If Peresvet blinds, then the new generation of laser weapons lead to the physical destruction of the target – thermal destruction, they burn up,” he told Russian state television.

Asked if such weapons were being used in Ukraine, Borisov said: “Yes. The first prototypes are already being used there.” He said the weapon was called “Zadira”.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy mockingly compared news of the lasers to the so-called wonder weapons that Nazi Germany unveiled in a bid to prevent defeat in World War Two.

“The clearer it became that they had no chance in the war, the more propaganda there was about an amazing weapon that would be so powerful as to ensure a turning point,” he said in a late night video address.

“And so we see that in the third month of a full-scale war, Russia is trying to find its ‘wonder weapon’ … this all clearly shows the complete failure of the mission.”

Almost nothing is publicly known about Zadira but in 2017 Russian media said state nuclear corporation Rosatom helped develop it as part of a programme to create weapons-based new physical principles.

The invasion of Ukraine has illustrated the limits of Russia’s post-Soviet conventional armed forces, though Putin says the “special military operation” is going to plan.

Borisov’s remarks indicate Russia has made significant progress with laser weapons, a trend of considerable interest to other nuclear powers such as the United States and China.

Using lasers to blind satellites was once a fantasy from the realm of science fiction, but the United States, China and Russia have been working on variants of such weapons for years.

Besides the benefit of burning up drones, blinding reconnaissance systems has a strategic impact too as satellites are used to monitor intercontinental ballistic missiles carrying nuclear weapons.

Borisov said he had just returned from Sarov, which is a centre of Russia’s nuclear weapons research. He said a new generation of laser weapons using a wide electromagnetic band would ultimately replace conventional weapons.

“This is not some sort of exotic idea; it is the reality,” Borisov said.

(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge in London; Additional reporting by David Ljunggren in Ottawa and Ronald Popeski in Winnipeg, Canada; Editing by Nick Macfie and Grant McCool)

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SYDNEY (Reuters) -Australia’s national election has become too close to call, polls out on Wednesday showed, as the ruling conservative coalition narrowed the gap with the main opposition Labor Party, three days before the country decides on a new government.

Centre-left Labor’s lead over the Liberal-National coalition has shrunk to 51-49% on a two-party preferred basis from 54-46% two weeks ago, a poll done for the Sydney Morning Herald showed. A Guardian poll indicated Labor’s lead had dipped to 48-46% from 49%-45% two weeks ago.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison described the pre-polling trends as “really encouraging”, while Labor acknowledged the election would be “incredibly close”.

With Australia going to the polls on Saturday, rising living costs have dominated the final stretches of the campaign with voters rating it as the most critical issue in some polls.

Australian wage growth ticked up by only a fraction last quarter, data out on Wednesday showed, even as a tightening labour market and record vacancies heightened competition for workers.

But consumer price inflation has risen twice as fast as wages, keeping real income in the red.

“I have been very candid with Australians about the economic challenges we’re facing … Labor has no magic bullet on this, they have no magic pen or magic wand,” Morrison told reporters from the marginal Labor-held seat of Corangamite in Victoria.

Opposition leader Anthony Albanese blamed government mismanagement for the slow rise in wages and inflation shock.

“Australian workers are paying the price for a decade of bad policy and economic failures while Scott Morrison says he should be rewarded with another three years because he is just getting started,” Albanese said.

Nearly 6 million voters out of an electorate of 17 million have already cast their ballots through postal votes or early in-person voting, official data showed.

An additional 1.1 million postal votes have been received so far versus the 2019 election. The Electoral Commission has flagged a clear winner may not emerge on election night if it is a close contest due to time required to count all postal votes.

(Reporting by Renju Jose; Editing by Stephen Coates and Sam Holmes)

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By Soo-hyang Choi

SEOUL (Reuters) – As North Korea battles its first known COVID outbreak, a lack of storage, chronic power shortages and inadequately trained medical staff pose acute challenges to inoculating its 25 million people – even with outside help, analysts said.

North Korea has not responded to offers of aid from South Korea and international vaccine-sharing programmes, but prefers U.S.-made Moderna and Pfizer over China’s Sinovac or British-Swedish Astrazeneca shots, according to South Korean officials.

Both the U.S. vaccines rely on technology known as mRNA, and require super-cold storage. Sinovac or AstraZeneca vaccines can be transported and stored at normal refrigerator temperatures.

“Moderna and Pfizer vaccines require a low-temperature storage system, which North Korea does not have,” said Moon Jin-soo, director of the Institute for Health and Unification Studies at Seoul National University. “It would require a ton of additional materials to use them for inoculation.”

South Korean officials have said it is not clear whether the North has access to such storage systems.

In March, the U.N. Security Council gave a sanctions exemption to the UNICEF to ship such “cold-chain” equipment to North Korea to assist with vaccinations.

The items included three walk-in cold rooms for “storage of routine immunization vaccines,” though it was not immediately confirmed whether they had been shipped amid strict border restrictions.

According to the North’s latest Voluntary National Review report presented to the U.N. last year, only 34.6% of its population had access to electricity, and the country’s roads and railways were, “in general, not in standard condition.”

Given those conditions, only few cities could accommodate the cold storage units, experts said.

Whether North Korea can mobilise trained medical personnel on a large scale for a nationwide inoculation campaign also remains an open question.

“You need a system and trained medical experts to distribute the doses and inject the shots. I doubt the North has that,” said Jacob Lee, a professor of infectious diseases at South Korea’s Hallym University School of Medicine.

North Korea has inoculated children for diseases such as tuberculosis with the help of international organizations. But U.N. aid agencies and most other relief groups have pulled out of the country amid extended border shutdowns.

South Korea’s foreign minister, Park Jin, said on Tuesday he would ask Washington for sanctions exemptions to send needed equipment to the North if it asks.

“The most important thing is speed,” said Shin Young-jeon, a professor at Hanyang University’s College of Medicine in Seoul. “The virus is already spreading fast, and without swift vaccination and immunity building, the death toll could soar to an uncontrollable level.”

(Reporting by Soo-hyang Choi. Editing by Gerry Doyle)

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KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — There is a cost to war — to the countries that wage it, to the soldiers who fight it, to the civilians who endure it. For nations, territory is gained and lost, and sometimes regained and lost again. But some losses are permanent. Lives lost can never be regained. Nor can limbs.

And so it is in Ukraine.

The stories of the people who undergo amputations during conflict are as varied as their wounds, as are their journeys of reconciliation with their injuries. For some, losing a part of their body can be akin to a death of sorts; coming to terms with it, a type of rebirth.

For soldiers wounded while defending their country, their sense of purpose and belief in the cause they were fighting for can sometimes help them cope psychologically with amputation. For some civilians, maimed while going about their lives in a war that already terrified them, the struggle can be much harder.

For the men, women and children who have lost limbs in the war in Ukraine, now in its third month, that journey is just beginning.

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OLENA

The explosion that took Olena Viter’s left leg also took her son, 14-year-old Ivan, a budding musician. Her husband Volodymyr buried him, along with another boy killed in the same blast, under a guelder rose bush in their garden. Amid the fighting, they couldn’t get to the cemetery.

“How am I going to live without Ivan? He will remain in my heart forever, like the fragment that hit him,” she said. When she’s alone, Olena cries.

Bombs rained down on Olena’s village of Rozvazhiv, in the Kyiv region, on March 14. Ivan and four others died; Olena was one of about 20 who were wounded.

At first, “I was thinking, ‘Why did God leave me alive?’” said Olena, 45, her soft voice breaking. Hearing Ivan was dead, she begged a neighbor to get his rifle and shoot her.

But Volodymyr pleaded with her, saying he couldn’t live without her.

Now, she endures the devastation of the loss of her child, and the physical pain of the loss of her leg, cut below the knee.

“Every day I get used to some new type of pain. I am thinking what kind of new pain will I see in the future,” she said.

She has yet to accept either of her losses.

“I am still not accepting myself as I am now,” Olena said. “I really liked to dance. I was doing sports. I don’t know, I need to learn.” She can’t yet imagine what it will be like to walk again.

Perhaps, Olena said, her life was spared because she was meant to do something, to help others, perhaps as a volunteer or by donations to a music school in Ivan’s memory.

“At the moment, I don’t know what I would want to do. I should keep searching. … I must learn how to live. How? I do not know yet.”

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YANA AND NATASHA

Devastation struck out of a clear blue sky for Yana Stepanenko. On April 8, the 11-year-old went to the eastern city of Kramatorsk with her mother, Natasha, and twin brother Yarik to board an evacuation train.

Yarik stayed in the station to guard their luggage while Yana and her mother went outside to buy tea.

A missile hit, and the world went black, and silent. Natasha fell. She couldn’t stand. She looked over and saw her little girl, her leggings dangling where her feet should be. Blood was everywhere.

“Mom, I’m dying,” Yana cried.

The injuries to mother and daughter were devastating. Yana lost two legs, one just above the ankle, the other higher up her shin. Natasha lost her left leg below the knee.

Yarik was uninjured and has been reunited with his mother and sister. The children’s father died of cancer several years ago, and their stepfather is fighting at the front. So now the little boy cares for his mother and sister, running around the hospital corridors, fetching wheelchairs and bringing food.

Natasha still struggles to comprehend what happened.

“Sometimes it seems like it happened not to us,” she said, crying softly.

She worries most about her daughter. “I cannot help her as a mother, I cannot pick her up, or help her move,” she said. “I can only support her with my words from my bed.”

Yana, like children everywhere, is eager to be up and about.

Yana misses her home and her friends and is looking forward to getting prosthetics.

“I really do want to run,” she said.

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SASHA

Alexander Horokhivskyi, known as Sasha, is in pain. And he is angry. He winces as he rubs the stump of his left thigh where his leg was amputated on April 4, nearly two weeks after he was injured.

Sasha was shot in the calf by his own side. A territorial defense member mistook him for a spy because he was snapping photos of bombed buildings near his home in Bobrovytsya, a city in the Chernihiv region, after emerging from a bomb shelter.

He was questioned for about 90 minutes at a police station before being taken to an overwhelmed hospital. Days later, he was moved to a hospital in the capital, Kyiv, where doctors decided they had to take his leg to save his life.

The 38-year-old, an avid table tennis player, only found out about the amputation when he awakened from surgery.

“How did they dare do all that without my consent?” he railed. Between the drugs and the pain, he doesn’t remember much. “I swore a lot.”

His journey has been painful, both physically and psychologically. He worries whether he’ll be able to play sports again, or travel. And the injustice of it all weighs on him.

“I try to understand how it could happen. Especially during the first week, I couldn’t think about anything else.” It would be different if he was wounded while fighting. “But to be injured in such a way was very hard.”

Still, he’s spoken with a psychologist, and he’s come a long way from those initial dark days. “It does not make sense to return to this moment,” he said. “Because you can’t change anything.”

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NASTIA

There had been no electricity or running water for two or three days in the Chernihiv basement where Nastia Kuzik, her parents, her brother, and another 120 people had taken shelter. Tired of the dark, she decided to go to her brother’s house nearby — just for a while.

Walking back toward the bomb shelter, the 21-year-old heard the noise: “tsch, tsch, tsch.” She ran. She was just a few steps from the entrance when the explosion flung her to the ground.

She drifted in and out of consciousness. Every time she opened her eyes, her brother was there, telling her everything would be OK. But nothing would ever be the same.

Doctors worked hard to save her leg, but it just wasn’t possible. Her lower right leg was amputated below the knee. Her other leg was badly broken.

Now, gradually, as she goes through painful physical therapy, reality is sinking in.

“I am accepting it,” she said. Nastia’s usually bright, cheerful disposition falters. A tear runs down her cheek. “I had never thought it would ever happen to me. But since it did, what can I do?”

She’s working hard to be optimistic. A German speaker, she has tutored children in the language, and she’s always wanted to study in Germany. In early May, she was evacuated to a specialized rehabilitation facility in Leipzig.

This was not the way wanted her dream to come true, but she said she’s going to make the most of it.

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ANTON

Lidiya Gladun had lost contact with 22-year-old Anton, a military medic deployed on the front lines in eastern Ukraine, for about three weeks. Then someone sent her a Facebook post by a nurse in a hospital in Kharkiv. They had an Anton Gladun in their hospital. Did anybody know him?

Lidiya contacted the nurse, who was sparing with information on Anton’s condition. When he was well enough to do so, Anton phoned his mother. He asked her to bring some clothes to the hospital. “He was mentioning flip-flops, and then he said he didn’t need flip-flops anymore.”

He believes it was a cluster bomb that struck his unit as it retreated on March 27. Anton lost both legs and his left arm, and his right arm was injured.

For days, Anton had been in a coma. When he regained consciousness, he said, “I was smiling, like everything was OK, basically. I was thinking that the most important thing was that I was alive.”

But he was haunted by nightmares and horrific hallucinations. A volunteer psychologist visited him, and with his help the hallucinations subsided. He no longer has nightmares. He doesn’t really dream at all.

He’s eager to get his prosthetics and start walking. He figures his military career is probably over, but he wants to study information technology.

What helps, he said, “is my understanding that if I would be sad, would cry because of what happened, then it would only be worse.”

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EDITOR’S NOTE — AP photojournalist Emilio Morenatti lost his left leg while covering the conflict in Afghanistan in 2009. “When a part of your body is amputated, you cross over into the disabled community, and a camaraderie inevitably develops,” he said. “My need to access this group is above any kind of impediment: I’m fascinated by comparing experiences, amputee to amputee. This is why I’m no longer interested in covering the war from the front line, but rather from behind the front lines, where the only thing that remains is the raw testimony of the cruelty marked by this damned war.”

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Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

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KYIV (Reuters) – Ukraine’s Eurovision Song Contest winners plan a tour of Europe to raise money for the army as it continues to put up fierce resistance to Russian forces more than 80 days after they invaded the country, they said on Tuesday.

Kalush Orchestra on Saturday rode a wave of popular support to win the competition, giving their compatriots a much-needed morale boost.

Frontman Oleh Psiuk told a televised news conference in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv that the band would soon announce on Instagram where it would tour.

“At every performance we are going to collect funds for the needs of the army,” he said.

Psiuk said he hoped Ukraine would host Eurovision next year and thanked the defenders of the besieged Azovstal steel works in the southern city of Mariupol for their courage in holding out for so long.

Fighters in the last stronghold in Mariupol have started to surrender, but a Ukrainian presidential adviser said their defiance had changed the course of the war.

Bookmakers had made Kalush Orchestra clear favourites in Eurovision. Their song “Stefania” that fuses rap with traditional folk music was lying fourth after national juries voted, but stormed into top spot thanks to a record score during voting by viewers.

(Reporting by Natalia Zinets,; Writing by Alexander Winning, editing by Ed Osmond)

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By Tom Balmforth and Jonathan Landay

KYIV/KHARKIV, Ukraine (Reuters) – Even as the Kremlin prepares to take full control of the ruins of Mariupol city, it faces the growing prospect of defeat in its bid to conquer all of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas because its badly mauled forces lack the manpower for significant advances.

Russian President Vladimir Putin may have to decide whether to send in more troops and hardware to replenish his dramatically weakened invasion force as an influx of modern Western weaponry bolsters Ukraine’s combat power, analysts say.

Russia’s forces are unlikely to be vanquished quickly even if no major new troop deployment materialises, setting the stage for the four-week-old Battle for the Donbas to grind on.

“I think it’s either going to be defeat with the current force posture, or mobilise. I don’t think there is any middle ground,” said Konrad Muzyka, director of the Poland-based Rochan consultancy.

He and other analysts said Russia’s invasion force was facing unsustainable troop and equipment losses, and that their window for a breakthrough was narrowing with Ukraine now bringing Western heavy artillery into the fray.

“Time is definitely working against the Russians. They’re running out of equipment. They’re running out of particularly advanced missiles. And, of course, the Ukrainians are getting stronger almost every day,” said Neil Melvin of the RUSI think-tank in London.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday that “everything is going to plan … there’s no doubt that all the objectives will be achieved,” the RIA news agency reported.

But in an unusually critical commentary on Russia’s main television channel this week, a prominent military analyst said Russians should stop swallowing “informational tranquilizers” about what Putin calls a special military operation.

With the increasing flow of U.S. and European weapon supplies to Ukrainian forces, “the situation will frankly get worse for us,” said Mikhail Khodaryonok, a retired colonel.

AZOVSTAL FALLS

Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24 in a failed drive to capture the capital, Kyiv. It then withdrew to focus on a “second phase” announced on April 19 to capture the south and all of the Donbas, a chunk of which has been held by Moscow-backed separatists since 2014.

Russia retained its land corridor in southern Ukraine, but was hampered by Ukrainian troops who held out against massive bombardments for 82 days in Mariupol’s Azovstal steel works before ending their resistance this week.

Meanwhile, Putin’s forces pressed against Ukraine’s battle-hardened, fortified positions in the east, while trying to cut them off in a massive encirclement by advancing south from the Ukrainian town of Izium.

Around a third of the Donbas was held by Russia-backed separatists before the invasion. Moscow now controls around 90% of Luhansk region, but it has failed to make major inroads towards the key cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk in Donetsk in order to extend control over the entire region.

“I’m deeply skeptical of their prospects” of conquering all of the Donbas, said Michael Kofman, an expert on the Russian military with CNA, a U.S. nonprofit research and analysis organisation.

“They’re dealing with a dramatically weakened force, probably substantially reduced morale. There’s a weak desire by officers to keep trying to prosecute offensives and the Russian political leadership on the whole seems to be procrastinating even as it’s facing the strategic defeat itself,” he said.

Muzyka said Russia appeared to be switching its focus in Donbas and had shifted battalion tactical groups eastward after failing to break the Ukrainian defences in Donetsk.

“They couldn’t push through from Izium so they moved to Sievierodonetsk and Lyman, possibly with the goal of trying to encircle Ukrainian forces around Sievierodonetsk and Lyman. Whether or not this occurs is an entirely different matter,” he said.

Gen. Valery Gerasimov, the Russian chief of army staff, visited the front this month in an apparent bid to iron out problems, but there is no evidence he succeeded, said Jack Keane, the chairman of the Institute for the Study of War in Washington.

“That offensive has indeed stalled,” he said.

To the north of the Donbas, Kyiv has mounted a counter-offensive near the city of Kharkiv in northeast Ukraine that has cleared Russian forces from shelling range of the country’s second biggest city and even reached the border in one place.

Muzyka said Ukraine might secure a significant part of its border with Russia north of Kharkiv this week.

But Ukraine will not be able to replicate that quick advance in the Donbas where Russia’s troops are much more densely concentrated.

“It’s going to be a hard fight. There’s going to be a hard fight and potentially a long fight. The Russian military hasn’t done well on the offensive, but it doesn’t rout or surrender easily either,” said Kofman.

‘ARTILLERY WAR’

The influx of Western heavy guns, including scores of U.S. – and some Canadian – M777 howitzers that have longer range than their Russian equivalents, could give Ukraine an edge in a war that has revolved around artillery duels.

“The Ukrainians are starting to outrange the Russians. That means they are able to operate without the threat of counter-battery fire from the Russians,” said Muzyka.

“Don’t get me wrong, the Russians still enjoy overall artillery superiority in terms of numbers, but I’m not sure if the same goes for the quality now… This is an artillery war.”

Muzyka and Kofman said that even if Putin does send more troops, such a move could take months to organise.

“It’s very clear they’re preparing for at least some kind of measures to call up men with prior service experience. But right now, from what I can tell, Putin is just kicking the can down the road and letting the situation within the Russian military actually get worse,” he said.

“For now,” he said, “this is looking like the Russians’ last offensive.”

(Reporting by Tom Balmforth and Jonathan Landay; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel)

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By Natalia Zinets

KYIV/NOVOAZOVSK, Ukraine (Reuters) -Ukraine’s military said on Tuesday it was working to evacuate all remaining troops from their last stronghold in the besieged port of Mariupol, ceding control of the city to Russia after months of bombardment.

The evacuation of hundreds of fighters, many wounded, to Russian-held towns, likely marked the end of the longest and bloodiest battle of the Ukraine war and a significant defeat for Ukraine. Mariupol is now in ruins after a Russian siege that Ukraine says killed tens of thousands of people in the city.

With the rest of Mariupol firmly in Russian hands, hundreds of Ukrainian troops and civilians had holed up beneath the city’s Azovstal steelworks. Civilians inside were evacuated in recent weeks, and more than 260 troops, some of them wounded, left the plant for Russian-controlled areas late on Monday.

“The ‘Mariupol’ garrison has fulfilled its combat mission,” the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said in a statement.

“The supreme military command ordered the commanders of the units stationed at Azovstal to save the lives of the personnel … Defenders of Mariupol are the heroes of our time,” it added.

Ukrainian Deputy Defence Minister Anna Malyar said 53 injured troops from the steelworks were taken to a hospital in the Russian-controlled town of Novoazovsk, some 32 km (20 miles) to the east, while another 211 people were taken to the town of Olenivka, in an area controlled by Russian-backed separatists.

All of the evacuees will be subject to a potential prisoner exchange with Russia, she added.

About 600 troops were believed to have been inside the steel plant. Ukraine’s military said efforts were under way to evacuate those still inside.

“We hope that we will be able to save the lives of our guys,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in an early morning address. “There are severely wounded ones among them. They’re receiving care. Ukraine needs Ukrainian heroes alive.”

Reuters saw five buses carrying troops from Azovstal arrive in Novoazovsk late on Monday. In one, marked with Z like many Russian military vehicles in Ukraine, men were stacked on stretchers on three levels. One man was wheeled out, his head tightly wrapped in thick bandages.

LVIV EXPLOSIONS, KHARKIV FIGHTING

Moscow calls its nearly three-month-old invasion a “special military operation” to rid Ukraine of fascists, an assertion Kyiv and its Western allies say is a baseless pretext for an unprovoked war.

Russia’s invading forces have run into apparent setbacks, with troops forced out of the north and the environs of Kyiv in late March. A Ukrainian counterattack in recent days has driven Russian forces out of the area near Kharkiv, the biggest city in the east.

Ukraine’s general staff said Russian forces were reinforcing and preparing to renew their offensive near Slovyansk and Drobysheve, southeast of the strategic town of Izyum, having suffered losses elsewhere.

Areas around Kyiv and the western city of Lviv, near the Polish border, have continued to come under Russian attack. A series of explosions struck Lviv early on Tuesday, a Reuters witness said. There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage.

On Monday, Ukraine’s defence ministry said troops had advanced all the way to the Russian border, about 40 km north of Kharkiv.

The successes near Kharkiv could let Ukraine attack supply lines for Russia’s main offensive, grinding on further south in the Donbas region, where Moscow has been launching mass assaults for a month.

A village in Russia’s western province of Kursk bordering Ukraine came under Ukrainian fire on Tuesday, regional Governor Roman Starovoit said. Three houses and a school were hit but there were no injuries, he said.

Russian border guards returned fire to quell the shooting from large-calibre weapons on the border village of Alekseyevka, Starovoit wrote on messaging app Telegram.

PUTIN CLIMBDOWN OVER NATO

Russia has faced massive sanctions for its actions in Ukraine, but EU foreign ministers failed to pressure Hungary to lift its veto of a proposed oil embargo.

McDonald’s Corp became one of the biggest global brands to exit Russia, laying out plans to sell all its restaurants after operating in the country for more than 30 years.

Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared on Monday to climb down from threats to retaliate against Sweden and Finland for announcing plans to join the U.S.-led NATO military alliance.

“As far as expansion goes, including new members Finland and Sweden, Russia has no problems with these states – none. And so in this sense there is no immediate threat to Russia from an expansion to include these countries,” Putin said.

The comments appeared to mark a major shift in rhetoric, after years of casting NATO enlargement as a direct threat to Russia’s security, including citing it as a justification for the invasion of Ukraine itself.

Putin said NATO enlargement was being used by the United States in an “aggressive” way to aggravate an already difficult global security situation, and that Russia would respond if the alliance moved weapons or troops forward.

“The expansion of military infrastructure into this territory would certainly provoke our response,” Putin said.

Finland and Sweden, both non-aligned throughout the Cold War, say they now want the protection offered by NATO’s treaty, under which an attack on any member is an attack on all.

Finalnd and Sweden’s plans, however, hit a snag when NATO member Turkey’s president said he would not approve either bid.

(Reporting by Natalia Zinets in Kyiv and a Reuters journalist in Novoazovsk; Additional reporting by Reuters bureaux; Writing by Rami Ayyub and Lincoln Feast; Editing by Stephen Coates)

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