As Russian troops rejigger their strategy under a new commander—Army General Alexander Dvornikov, known as the “butcher” of Syria for his blatant disregard for civilian life—Ukrainians are bracing for the worst.
On Monday, President Volodymyr Zelensky told South Korea’s parliament that many people had died in the port city of Mariupol, where survivors are now burying the dead where they fell, often in public parks and roadside ditches. “They tried to capture it in the most brutal way—just to destroy everything in the city,” Zelensky said in a video address in which he asked for the same sort of support the world gave South Korea during the Korean War between 1950 and 1953. “Mariupol is destroyed. There are tens of thousands of dead. But even so, the Russians are not stopping the offensive. They want to make Mariupol a showcase of a ruined city.”
Zelensky over the weekend warned that the new phase of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “special operation” would soon get worse as Russia prepares to launch full-scale combat operations in the east. “We are ready,” Zelensky said during his nightly taped address.
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Russia’s military personnel losses are massive, according to a new report by the BBC, which says it has confirmed that 20 percent of the troops who have died in Ukraine are officers, including 10 colonels, 20 lieutenant colonels, 31 majors, and 155 junior officers. Zelensky warned that Russia would be concentrating “tens of thousands” of troops for the new offensive that will largely be targeted on the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. “Russian troops will move to even larger operations in the east of our state,” he said in his address from Kyiv. “They may use even more missiles against us, even more air bombs. But we are preparing for their actions. We will answer.”
An eight-mile long convoy—seen edging toward the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv over the weeekend—started raining down bombs overnight, including several that witnesses say were dropped with parachutes, making them silent killers since the sound of rockets often gives people time to try to take cover.
Where Russian troops have pulled out, Ukrainians are finding abuses on an unimaginable scale. In a mass grave near a petrol station north of Kyiv discovered Sunday, the evidence of the brutality was apparent. “There were more than 50 dead people. They shot them from close distance,” Ludmila Zabaluk, head of the Dmytriv Village Department, told Reuters. “There’s a car where a 17-year-old child was burned, only bones left. A woman had half her head blown off. A bit farther, a man lying near his car was burned alive.”
On Monday, Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer will visit Putin in person. Though Austria is militarily neutral and not a member of NATO, Nehammer said he will tell Putin “the truth” in an effort to get him to agree to a cease-fire. It will be the Russian leader’s first face-to-face meeting with a European leader since his invasion began Feb. 24.
