Morning from Ukraine.
Kyiv remains in Ukrainian hands, while the city of Mariupol refuses to surrender.
The Russian military said it had until this morning to do so.
An advisor to the Mariupol mayor responded on Facebook with an expletive.
Hundreds of thousands of civilians remain trapped in the southeastern port city of Mariupol.
They face dwindling supplies of food and water, and no electricity. On top of that, the shelling and the bombings:
The deputy prime minister of Ukraine told a Ukrainian newspaper that the Russian demands were eight pages of quote “delusions”...
...that the Russians have taken the people of Mariupol hostage
...and that a surrender would not happen.
nv.ua/ukr/ukraine/ev…
Meanwhile, Zelenskyy continues his personalized appeals to various countries for help... here, to Germany:
VIDEO: This here in Kyiv used to be a shopping mall called 'Retroville':
Michael Kofman walks us through the stalled fronts in the Russian invasion, and what could be called the end of the beginning.
The next part could see a lot more devastation and killing:
This is Eugene, a combat veteran who is in Odesa.
His family is in besieged Mariupol, and he hasn't heard from them in more than two weeks.
Photo: A pensioner sweeping in Odesa, near a barricade...
And other scenes in Odesa, which in normal times would be a bustling tourism hotspot
NPR visited military positions in the southern part of Ukraine in the last 24 hours...
...Will share the details in the next couple hours, but standby, I need to run to an interview...
This is the south of Ukraine, along the Black Sea.
It in this region that Ukrainian officials say that they are prepared for the Russian military if they try an amphibious landing
If the Russian military were to do an amphibious landing near Odesa, this is one of the places they might do it
We observed armored vehicles, mined beaches, and entrenched fighting positions meant to fight off any potential Russian amphibious landing in southwestern Ukraine.
We also observed the sign posts that Ukrainians have taken down and replaced with new messages.
This one tells the Russians where they can go… I’ll let you do the translation yourself.
Scenes across southern Ukraine: wind turbines near the Black Sea, a tower with the a Ukrainian flag, if you look closely
Two weeks ago, and 30km away, a downed Russian pilot was captured in this region… and handed over to the Ukrainian authorities, the UKR military says.
There’s a similarity between the badges I see on Ukrainian kit, and those I've seen in the United States, where ‘Molon Labe’ is very popular
Along the way we met another Eugene, who said that he got this suppressor for his rifle eight years ago when the war broke out, and that it's nearly impossible to find that sort of thing for sale now:
Here I am trying to do a stand-up on an armored vehicle that Ukrainian marines use, when they started it up suddenly
Today’s dog of war is Louie, who accosted me as I was trying to get some reporting done
Neither Louie nor Gilza seem to understand the meaning of "I'm on deadline!"
Senior U.S. defense official: Russian forces have shown almost no signs of advancing over past week.
Artillery shelling, air missions, naval shelling in the Black Sea all up, though no momentum and no imminent landing around Odesa
Senior U.S. defense official, cont.:
Russian mil are continuing to have logistics issues, said the official, and a significant # of their precision-guided weapons are failing to launch/not exploding on impact.
But Russia still has close to 90% of their combat power available.
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