Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed victory in the strategic city of Mariupol on Thursday, even as he ordered his troops not to risk more losses by storming the last pocket of Ukrainian resistance in the war’s iconic battleground. Russian troops have besieged the southeastern port city since the early days of the conflict and largely reduced it to ruins. Top officials have repeatedly claimed it was about to fall, but Ukrainian forces have stubbornly held on in the face of overwhelming odds. In recent weeks, they holed up in a sprawling steel plant, as Russian forces pounded the industrial site and repeatedly issued ultimatums ordering their surrender. But on Thursday, as he has done before, Putin seemed to shift the narrative and declared victory without taking the plant. “The completion of combat work to liberate Mariupol is a success,” he said in a joint appearance with his defense minister. “Congratulations.” Ukraine scoffed at the idea that a Russian victory in Mariupol was already achieved. “This situation means the following — they cannot physically capture Azovstal. They have understood this. They suffered huge losses there,” said Oleksiy Arestovich, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. By painting the mission as a success even without a head-on storming of the plant, Putin may be seeking to take the focus off the site, which has become a global symbol of defiance. Even without the plant, the Russians appear to have control of the rest of the city and its vital port, though that facility seems to have suffered extensive damage. The Russian leader said that, for now, he would not risk sending troops into the warren of tunnels under the giant Azovstal plant, instead preferring to isolate the holdouts “so that not even a fly comes through.” Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said the plant was blocked off, while giving yet another prediction that the site could be taken in days. Shoigu said about 2,000 Ukrainian troops remained in the site, which has a 24 kilometers (15 miles) of tunnels and bunkers that spread out across about 11 square kilometers (4 square miles). Ukrainian officials said that about 1,000 civilians were also trapped there along with 500 wounded soldier and demanded their release. Putin’s order may mean that Russian forces are hoping they can wait for the defenders to surrender after running out of food or ammunition. Bombings of the plant could well continue. Russian-backed separatists in the Mariupol area previously seemed bent on taking every last inch of the city, which holds both strategic and symbolic importance. Its fall would represent the biggest victory of the war in Ukraine yet, and the scale of suffering in the city on the Azov Sea has made it a worldwide focal point. Its definitive capture would also complete a land bridge between Russia and the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow seized in 2014, and allow Putin’s forces to shift their attention to the larger battle for Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland, where a more important measure of success may lie. “The Russian agenda now is not to capture these really difficult places where the Ukrainians can hold out in the urban centers, but to try and capture territory and also to encircle the Ukrainian forces and declare a huge victory,” retired British Rear Admiral Chris Parry said. Parry […]

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