Claimed image of a woman and her baby in an underground shelter below the Azovstal iron and steel works in Mariupol in southeast Ukraine. Russian forces are still trying to overrun the last site of resistance in the port city.

EA on ABC’s The World: Russia’s “Plan B” Bogs Down in the Donbas

Tuesday’s Coverage: “Russian Troops Have Begun The Battle for the Donbas”

UPDATE 1615 GMT:

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has said there is “no taboo” on
providing tanks to Ukraine, “even if it may sound like that in the German debate”.

But in Riga alongside the Latvian Foreign Minister, Edgars Rinkēvičs, Baerbock said the German army no longer has military hardware which can be delivered quickly without undermining Berlin’s security commitments. So Germany has agreed a swap system where it will fill gaps of NATO and G7 states who can assist Kyiv more expeditiously.

On Tuesday night, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said the Government would support Ukraine with cash rather than by tanks or armored vehicles.

He added, “We have asked the German arms industry to tell us which material it can deliver in the short term. Ukraine has now made a selection from this list and we will provide it with the required money for the purchase.”

The list of materials includes anti-tank weapons, anti-airsyste ms, and munition “that could be used in artillery battle”. But Ukraine’s Ambassador to Germay, Andrij Melnyk, said Scholz’s message was received in Kyiv “with great disappointment and bitterness”.

UPDATE 1410 GMT:

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has posted footage of himself with the visiting European Council President Charles Michel in Kyiv on Wednesday.

Zelenskiy wrote, “Sanctions against Russia, defence and financial support of our state, and answers to the questionnaire on compliance with EU criteria were discussed.”

Standing alongside Michel, he said, “According to our information, they are keeping 120,000 people in besieged Mariupol. Crimes that are happening there are far more scary and large scale than in Borodyanka,” a town northwest of Kyiv where mass killings are suspected and which Michel toured before the meeting with the President.

“I’m confident with combined efforts we can bring all of those responsible to justice, and I promise you we’ll find them all,” Zelenskiy added.

UPDATE 1403 GMT:

Ukraine Presidential advisor Oleksiy Arestovych says Russian troops have been checked in their attempt to advance from Izyum, a key staging point for their Donbas offensive, towards the nearby city of Slovyansk.

“They have focused their forces there, that is where they are trying to advance, but so far they are not succeeding,” Arestovych said in a video address.

UPDATE 1254 GMT:

Mykyta Poturayev, the head of the Ukraine Parliament’s Humanitarian Committee, has told the European Parliament, “Half a million of Ukrainian citizens were deported from Ukraine to the Russian Federation without agreement from their side.”

Poturayev expressed concern about their fate, saying there was “no opportunity” to make contact:

We know about so-called filtration camps for Ukrainian citizens. That’s one of the possible directions of Red Cross activity, at least to find these deported people and to understand what is going [on] with them on the territory of the Russian Federation.

Alexandra Boivi of the Red Cross said the organization in in discussions with Russian officials; however, “the question about whether we can confirm that people were forcibly displaced at this moment is one that I cannot answer….It’s certainly an issue of concern.”

UPDATE 1247 GMT:

The UN refugee agency UNHCR reports the number of Ukrainian refugees during the Russian invasion is 5,010,971.

More than 218,000 third-country nationals, mainly students and migrant workers, have also fled.

About 90% of the refugees are women and children.

Another 7.1 million of Ukraine’s population of 44 million are displaced inside the country.

UPDATE 1243 GMT:

Norway is providing advanced air defense missile systems to Ukraine.

UPDATE 0905 GMT:

Ukraine’s nuclear regulators have restored direct communications with the defunct Chernobyl nuclear plant, said the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Ukraine’s nuclear regulators lost contact with the plant on March 10 after Russian forces occupied the area. The Russians withdrew at the end of March, amid Moscow’s retreat from northern Ukraine.

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Russia’s “Plan B” offensive in eastern Ukraine is faltering, less then 48 hours after the ground assault escalated, according to intelligence officials.

Russian forces occupied the town of Kreminna, with almost 20,000 people, in eastern Luhansk. But elsewhere they were repeatedly repelled by Ukrainian defenders, said Ukraine’s officials and the UK Ministry of Defense.

British intelligence assessing that while Russian shelling and strikes continue to increase on the frontline in the Donbas, Moscow’s troops are again hampered by logistical and technological problems.

Those problems were a major reason for the failure of Vladimir Putin’s “Plan A”, the quick occupation of Ukrainian cities such as the capital Kyiv with the capture and possible killing of Ukraine’s leaders such as President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

The UK officials also cited Russia’s “inability to stamp out resistance” in Mariupol in southern Ukraine, despite an eight-week siege and bombardment that has levelled the port city, reportedly killing more than 20,000 people.

Ukrainian fighters in the Azovstal iron and steel works are still defying Russian attacks and demands for surrender. About 1,000 civilians, many of them women with children and the elderly, are hiding in underground shelters beneath the steel plant, according to the city council.

The Russian Defense Ministry said it will set yet another “surrender or die” deadline on Wednesday.

While clinging to the fight, the commander of the 36th Marine Brigade said the defenders are “maybe facing our last days, if not hours” as “the enemy is outnumbering us 10 to one”.

Serhiy Volyna said in a video, “We appeal and plead to all world leaders to help us. We ask them to use the procedure of extraction and take us to the territory of a third-party state.”

Presidential advisor Mykhailo Podolyak tweeted:

President Zelenskiy said in his late-night video to the nation on Tuesday:

The Russian army will forever inscribe itself in world history as perhaps the most barbaric and inhuman army in the world. Deliberately killing civilians, destroying residential quarters and civilian infrastructure, and using all kinds of weapons, including those prohibited by international conventions, is already the brand signature of the Russian army.

Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boychenko said about 100,000 civilians remain in the city. The aim is to evacuate 6,000 in 90 buses today.

Ukraine Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk wrote on Telegram that a humanitarian corridor has been agreed to evacuate women, children and the elderly. Civilians are to gather at 2 pm (11am GMT) and travel to Zaporizhzhia, 132 miles to the northwest, via Berdyansk.

But Deputy Mariupol Mayor Sergei Orlov is cautious, “Do not believe in any words from Russia. It would be good if they allowed civilians to leave the Azovstal, but they didn’t allow this for 50 days, why should they allow this now?”

Russia rejected calls for a ceasefire at a UN Security Council meeting on Tuesday.