Russian forces in Ukraine moved on Wednesday to tighten their siege of key cities, including the capital, Kyiv, and the southern port of Mariupol, as one mayor told residents he had been given an ultimatum to surrender or the city would be razed by shelling.
At an outdoor meeting, Artem Semenikhin, the mayor of Konotop, in the eastern Sumy region, told residents: “They have given us an ultimatum. If we start resisting, they’ll wipe out the town using artillery.”
“If you are for it, we’ll fight,” Semenikhin is heard telling a crowd of residents. “Who votes to fight?” he shouts as residents shout back, insisting they will resist.
Amid renewed heavy shelling, the mayors of Kharkiv, also in the country’s east, and Kyiv insisted they had no intention of surrendering.
Ukrainians also said they were fighting on in the Black Sea port of Kherson – the first sizeable city Russia claimed to have seized, which has also come under fierce attack.
With shortages of food already biting and mounting concerns over the ability of hospitals to function in besieged areas, some western officials privately began raising fears that Russian forces would use the same tactics as those used against civilian populations during the Chechen and Syria wars, which involved scorched-earth tactics.
Officials and defenders in the southern port of Mariupol on Wednesday became the latest to say they were surrounded, with Russian troops shelling civilian sites, including residential blocks, hospitals and dormitories for people displaced by fighting.
One soldier in the city, reached by the Guardian, said it was clear Russian forces were attempting to encircle and besiege them.
“Right now there is active fighting for the city and it is only accessible to one side. There’s constant shelling,” he said, adding he was being moved to the frontline.
“We believe they want do the same to Mariupol as they are doing to Kyiv and Kharkiv. They are trying to encircle us and wipe us out with artillery. They want to kill civilians and damage civilian infrastructure. That’s what we need to stop them doing.”
“They have been flattening us non-stop for 12 hours now,” the Mariupol mayor, Vadym Boichenko, was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying. “We cannot even take the wounded from the streets, from houses and apartments today, since the shelling does not stop.”
In Kharkiv, where pictures on social media appeared to show bodies lying in the street on Wednesday, Oleksiy Demchenko, a 27-year-old computer programmer, sounded desperate as he spoke to the Guardian by phone.
“Right now we are just trying to hold on. To tell the truth, it’s hell, there are a lot airstrikes.
“The Russians came into the city a few days ago but the army destroyed them. Now they are hitting us from outside. Yesterday, I wanted to go out to fill bottles with water but air strikes were killing people in the streets. But we have some social services trying to help us with deliveries of food and water.
“I think their goal is to break us psychologically because they want us to evacuate the city. It’s a terror tactic which we saw in Chechnya and Afghanistan. But our army will protect us. People won’t surrender.
“They are hitting people’s houses, health facilities, cultural facilities and parks. I live in the centre of Kharkiv. We saw the airstrikes yesterday and we’re hiding in the bedroom because it’s the most secure place in the house.”
With hospitals, including two maternity wards in Mariupol, being moved into basements, international health officials were warning of a rapidly escalating emergency that is most acute in those cities most encircled.
Describing the health situation in those cities, Jarno Habicht, the World Health Organization’s representative in Ukraine, told the Guardian: “We see that some cities now are getting isolated and we are getting reports that people don’t feel safe seek healthcare with healthcare workers under attack.
“This is moving very fast with the military offensive broadening and we are moving closer to a humanitarian crisis.
“What we are seeing in places where there are hostilities is health service provisions now being moved to the shelters and basements. We don’t have a full picture but we are concerned about electricity provision, which is important to keep machines running, and oxygen and medicines for intensive care.”
The shift in Russian tactics follows a Pentagon assessment that Moscow has begun pivoting to crude siege tactics around a number of cities since the beginning of the week amid fears that they may include shutting off access to supplies for trapped civilian populations, with the country’s strategy in Chechnya and Syria – where it used artillery and air bombardments to pulverise cities – being seen as a model.
Adding to those fears, Britain’s Ministry of Defence said it had seen an increase in Russian air and artillery strikes on populated urban areas over the past two days.
Commenting on the move to besiege cities, Malcolm Chalmers, of the Royal United Services Institute, said the new approach suggested both failures in Russian intelligence in the runup to the invasion and failures of Russians tactics as the invasion first began.
“It appears that Putin was advised that this would be much easier than it has been and the Russians have made a number of mistakes early on.
“While there have been a lot of issues with this operation, including problems with logistics and air support, what the Russian armed forces are good at is artillery and missile fire, which is why we are seeing a move to siege tactics.
“But both options have issues. If they have to go block to block fighting, that will be difficult and they will take casualties. Even in Iraq, when very well-coordinated Iraqi forces went into Mosul [against Islamic State] backed by Nato air support, it was very slow. And every day that passes gives the Ukrainian defenders more time to dig in.
“If they shell from outside the cities in the hope they will surrender that has significant consequences for the civilian populations inside.”
US defence officials noted the same changes in tactics, saying that Russian forces were regrouping and making more use of a multiple rocket-launch system that can employ unguided cluster munitions and thermobaric rounds.
Commenting on the change in Russian tactics, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said the escalation of attacks on crowded areas amounted to “terror”.
“Nobody will forgive. Nobody will forget,” he vowed after Tuesday’s bloodshed on the central square in Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city, and the deadly bombing of a TV tower in the capital. He called the attack on the square a “frank, undisguised terror” and a war crime.
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