KYIV, Ukraine (AP) – The mayor of the Ukrainian port of Mariupol said on Monday that more than 10,000 civilians had died in the Russian siege of his city and that the death toll could exceed 20,000, with corpses “turned away”. with carpet.  Street’s.”
Speaking by telephone to the Associated Press on Monday, Mayor Vadym Boychenko also said Russian forces had brought mobile incineration equipment to Mariupol to dispose of the bodies, and accused Russian forces of refusing to allow humanitarian convoys in the city in an attempt to hide the bodies.
Russian forces transported many bodies to a huge shopping mall with storage facilities and refrigerators, Boychenko said.
“Mobile crematoria have arrived in the form of trucks: You open it and there is a pipe inside and these bodies are burning,” he said.
The mayor’s comments came as Russia claimed to have destroyed several Ukrainian air defense systems in what appeared to be a new impetus to gain air supremacy and remove weapons that Kyiv described as critical before an expected wide-ranging new offensive in the east.
In one strike, Moscow said it had struck four S-300 launchers near the central city of Dnipro, supplied by an unnamed European country.  Slovakia gave Ukraine just such a system last week, but denied it had been destroyed.  Russia has previously reported two strikes on similar systems elsewhere.
Failure to gain full control of Ukraine’s skies has hampered Moscow’s ability to provide air cover to troops on the ground, limiting their progress and possibly exposing them to greater losses.
With their offensive in many parts of the country prevented, Russian forces increasingly rely on city bombing – a strategy that left many urban areas flat and killed thousands.
Ukrainian authorities accuse Russian forces of committing atrocities, including the massacre in the city of Bukha, outside Kyiv, airstrikes on hospitals and a rocket attack that killed at least 57 people at a train station last week.
In Bucha on Monday, work on exhuming a mass grave from a churchyard resumed.
Galyna Feoktistova waited for hours in the cold and rain hoping to recognize her 50-year-old son, who was shot and killed more than a month ago but eventually went home for some warmth.  “She is still there,” said her surviving son, Andriy.
In Mariupol, about 120,000 citizens are in dire need of food, water, warmth and communications, the mayor said.
Only those residents who have passed the Russian “filter camps” are liberated from the city, Boychenko said.  He said improvised prisons had been set up for those who did not pass the “filter”, while at least 33,000 had been transferred to Russia or to separatist territories in Ukraine.
Meanwhile, the UN Children’s Service said almost two-thirds of all Ukrainian children had fled their homes in the six weeks since the Russian invasion began.  The United Nations has verified that 142 children were killed and 229 injured, although the actual numbers are probably much higher.
Elsewhere, Austrian Chancellor Carl Nehammer said he had met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Monday for talks that were “very direct, open and tough”.
In a statement issued by his office, Nehammer said his main message to Putin was “that this war must end, because in war both sides can only lose.”  Nehammer said he also raised the issue of war crimes committed by the Russian military and said those responsible “would be held accountable”.
Austria is a member of the European Union and has backed sanctions by the 27-nation bloc against Russia, although it has so far opposed a halt to Russian gas supplies.  The country is militarily neutral and is not a member of NATO.
In other news, the head of the separatist rebel government in Donetsk said Ukrainian forces had lost control of the Mariupol port area.
“As for the port of Mariupol, it is now under our control,” Denis Pushilin, president of the Donetsk People’s Republic, told Russian state television, according to Russian news agencies.  The claim could not be immediately confirmed.
The mayor said the fighting was continuing.
“It is difficult, but the heroic army is holding us,” Boichenko said.  “There are fights in the port.  Yesterday, our heroic warriors struck many positions of equipment and, as a result, repulsed the infantry.
Russia has appointed an experienced general to lead the renewed push in the eastern Donbass region, where Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian forces since 2014 and have declared independent states.
The Pentagon’s latest assessment is that Russia is preparing for an intensive attack there as more troops and equipment move into the region.
A senior U.S. defense official said a large convoy was heading toward the eastern city of Izyum with artillery, air force and infantry support.
More artillery is being deployed near the city of Donetsk, while ground combat units withdrawn from the Kiev and Chernihiv regions appear to be intended for reconstruction and refueling before being deployed in Donbas, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. discuss the interior of the US.  military assessments.
Both sides are digging for what could be a devastating war of attrition.
Russian forces are likely to try to encircle the Donbas area from the north and south as well as the east, said retired British General Richard Barons, co-chair of the UK-based strategic consulting firm Universal Defense & Security Solutions.
The terrain in this part of Ukraine is flatter, more open and less forested – so the Ukrainian ambush tactics used around Kyiv may be less successful, Barrons said.
“As for the result, it is well balanced at the moment,” Barrons said.  If the Russians learned from their previous failures, gathered more power, better connected their air force with the ground forces and improved their logistics, “then they might eventually start flooding the Ukrainian positions, although I still think it would be a battle.” enormous wear and tear. “
In a video address to South Korean lawmakers Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy specifically called for equipment that could shoot down Russian missiles.
But these equipments could come under increasing attack as Russia seeks to shift the balance in the six-week war.
Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Lt. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said the army used cruise missiles to destroy the four launchers Sunday in the southern suburbs of Dnipro.  He said the army had also hit such systems in the Mykolaiv and Kharkiv regions.
The Russian allegations could not be independently verified.
The Pentagon said it had seen no evidence to support Russia’s claims.  And Lubica Janikova, a spokeswoman for the Slovak prime minister, denied on Monday that the S-300 system she had sent to Ukraine had been destroyed.  He said that any other claim is not true.
Questions remain about the ability of exhausted and discouraged Russian forces to gain ground after being repulsed in Kyiv by determined Ukrainian defenders.
The British Ministry of Defense said on Monday that Ukraine had already repulsed several attacks by Russian forces in the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions – which are Donbass – resulting in the destruction of Russian tanks, vehicles and artillery.
Western military analysts say Russia’s attack is increasingly focused on an arc of land extending from Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, in the north to Kherson in the south.
A residential area in Kharkov was hit by an impending fire on Monday afternoon.  Associated Press reporters saw firefighters put out the blaze and search for victims after the attack, and saw that at least five people were killed, including a child.
Oleh Synyehubov, Kharkiv’s regional governor, said earlier Monday that Russian bombings had killed 11 people in the past 24 hours.
Karmanau reported from Lviv, Ukraine.  Anna reported from Bukha, Ukraine.  Associated Press writer Robert Burns in Washington and AP reporters around the world contributed to this report.