Vladimir Putin has vowed that Russia’s bloody offensive in Ukraine will continue until its goals are fulfilled.
The Russian President insisted the campaign was going as planned, despite a major withdrawal in the face of stiff Ukrainian opposition and significant losses.
Russian troops, thwarted in their push toward Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, are now focusing on the eastern Donbas region, where Ukrainian officials said they are investigating a claim that a poisonous substance had been dropped on its troops.
It is not clear what the substance might be, but Western officials have warned that any use of chemical weapons by Russia would be a serious escalation of the already devastating war.
Russia invaded on February 24, with the goal, according to Western officials, of taking Kyiv, toppling the government and installing a Moscow-friendly regime.
In the six weeks since, Russia’s ground advance stalled, its forces have lost potentially thousands of fighters and the military stands accused of killing civilians and other atrocities.
Mr Putin insisted that his invasion aimed to protect people in parts of eastern Ukraine controlled by Moscow-backed rebels and to “ensure Russia’s own security”.
He said Russia “had no other choice” but to launch what he called a “special military operation”, and vowed it would “continue until its full completion and the fulfilment of the tasks that have been set”.
For now, Mr Putin’s forces are gearing up for a major offensive in the Donbas, which has been torn by fighting between Russian-allied separatists and Ukrainian forces since 2014, and where Russia has recognised separatists’ claims of independence.
Military strategists say Russian leaders appear to hope local support, logistics and terrain in the region favour Russia’s larger and better-armed military, potentially allowing its troops to turn the tide.
In Mariupol, a strategic port city in the Donbas, a Ukrainian regiment defending a steel mill claimed a drone dropped a poisonous substance on the city. It indicated there were no serious injuries.
The assertion by the Azov Regiment, a far-right group now part of the Ukrainian military, could not be independently verified.
It came after a Russia-allied separatist official appeared to urge the use of chemical weapons, telling Russian state TV on Monday that separatist forces should seize the plant by first blocking all the exits.
“And then we’ll use chemical troops to smoke them out of there,” the official, Eduard Basurin, said. He denied on Tuesday that separatist forces had used chemical weapons in Mariupol.
Ukraine’s deputy defence minister Hanna Maliar said officials are investigating, and it was possible phosphorus munitions – which cause horrendous burns but are not classed as chemical weapons – had been used in Mariupol.
The city has been pummelled by Russian troops, with the mayor saying more than 10,000 civilians have died, with their corpses “carpeted through the streets”.
Mayor Vadym Boychenko claimed the death toll in Mariupol alone could surpass 20,000 and gave new details of allegations by Ukrainian officials that Russian forces have brought mobile cremation equipment to dispose of the corpses.
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, acknowledged the challenges Ukrainian troops face in Mariupol.
He said on Twitter that they remain blocked and are having issues with supplies, while Zelenskyy and Ukrainian generals “do everything possible (and impossible) to find a solution and help our guys”.
In the tweet, he said: “For more than 1.5 months our defenders protect the city from (Russian) troops, which are 10+ times larger.
“They’re fighting under the bombs for each meter of the city. They make (Russia) pay an exorbitant price.”
Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said the use of chemical weapons “would be a callous escalation in this conflict”, while Australian foreign minister Marise Payne said it would be a “wholesale breach of international law”.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said the US could not confirm the drone report. But he noted the Biden administration’s persistent concerns “about Russia’s potential to use a variety of riot control agents, including tear gas mixed with chemical agents, in Ukraine”.
The UK has warned that Russia may use phosphorus bombs – whose use in civilian areas is banned under international law – in Mariupol.
Reports that Russian forces may have used chemical agents in an attack on the people of Mariupol. We are working urgently with partners to verify details.
Any use of such weapons would be a callous escalation in this conflict and we will hold Putin and his regime to account.— Liz Truss (@trussliz) April 11, 2022
In the face of stiff resistance by Ukrainian forces bolstered by Western weapons, Russian forces have increasingly relied on bombarding cities, flattening many urban areas and leaving thousands of people dead. The war has also driven more than 10 million Ukrainians from their homes – including nearly two-thirds of all the country’s children.
Moscow’s retreat from cities and towns around the capital, Kyiv, led to the discovery of large numbers of apparently massacred civilians, prompting widespread condemnation and accusations that Russia is committing war crimes in Ukraine.
Mr Putin falsely claimed on Tuesday that Ukraine’s accusation that hundreds of civilians were killed by Russian troops in the town of Bucha were “fake”.
Associated Press reporters saw dozens of bodies in and around the town, some with hands bound who appeared to have been shot at close range.
The Russian leader spoke at the Vostochny space launch facility in the country’s Far East, during his first known foray outside Moscow since the war began.
He also said that foreign powers would not succeed in isolating Russia.
Mr Putin said that Russia’s economy and financial system had withstood the blow from what he called the Western sanctions “blitz”, and claimed this would backfire by driving up prices for essentials such as fertiliser, leading to food shortages and increase migration flows to the West.
Addressing the pace of the campaign, Mr Putin said Russia was proceeding “calmly and rhythmically” because it wanted to “achieve the planned goals while minimising the losses”.
While building up forces in the east, Russia continued to strike targets across Ukraine in a bid to wear down the country’s defences.
Russia’s defence ministry said on Tuesday that it used used air- and sea-launched missiles to destroy an ammunition depot and airplane hangar at Starokostiantyniv in the western Khmelnytskyi region and an ammunition depot near Kyiv.
