A major civilian evacuation from the besieged Ukrainian port city of Mariupol progressed on Monday, although Russia claimed to have pounded more than three dozen other locales in eastern Ukraine with missiles and Western European countries inched closer to imposing sweeping new sanctions on Russia’s critical energy sector.
In Washington, the CIA revealed efforts to reach out to high-level Russian officials who may be eager to collaborate out of frustration with President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, which continued Monday to face major setbacks amid fierce resistance from Ukrainian forces armed with weapons from the U.S. and other NATO countries.
More than 255 of Russia’s invading ground forces have been “rendered combat ineffective,” according to a new assessment Monday by the British Defense Ministry, which asserted that “some of Russia’s most elite units, including the VDV Airborne Forces, have suffered the highest levels of attrition.”
The British assessment comes as the Pentagon is saying the Russian offensive in southern and eastern Ukraine has made “anemic” progress so far and the Kremlin deals with some self-inflicted wounds from the propaganda wars over the Feb. 24 decision to invade. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov drew sharp criticism Monday from Israel for asserting during an interview with an Italian news outlet that Adolf Hitler “had Jewish blood.”
Mr. Lavrov made the assertion while defending Russian claims that it invaded Ukraine to “de-Nazify” the country, despite the fact that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is Jewish and had family members killed in the Holocaust.
The Kremlin was also facing mounting speculation and unconfirmed reports in Western news outlets that Mr. Putin may be ill, allegedly suffering from Parkinson’s disease and possibly thyroid or abdominal cancer. The speculation has spiraled since a Kremlin video last week showed Mr. Putin tightly gripping a table and slouching with what appeared to be a bloated face. A separate clip seemed to show the Russian president’s hand flapping uncontrollably as he prepared to meet Belarusian ally President Alexander Lukashenko.
SEE ALSO: Pentagon sees ‘minimal’ progress for Russians in renewed assault
The Daily Mail, a British tabloid, reported recently that Mr. Putin is set to undergo cancer surgery, according to an unnamed “Kremlin insider” cited on the popular Telegram channel General SVR. The Daily Mail claimed General SVR first began reporting that Mr. Putin had abdominal cancer and Parkinson’s 18 months ago.
A report last week by the German outlet Deutsche Welle stressed that the reports are purely speculation. The outlet cited interviews with multiple doctors who had studied the video footage of Mr. Putin and concluded that a wide range of factors could have contributed to the Russian president’s mannerisms and appearance in the footage.
Mariupol evacuation
The first civilians evacuated from the bombed-out steel plant that has become the last stronghold of Ukrainian fighters in the besieged southern port city of Mariupol slowly made their way toward safety Monday, as others who managed to escape the city described terrifying weeks of bombardment and deprivation.
More than 100 civilians — including elderly women and mothers with small children — left the sprawling, rubble-strewn Azovstal steel mill on Sunday and set out in buses and ambulances for the Ukrainian-controlled city of Zaporizhzhia, about 140 miles to the northwest, according to authorities and video released by the two sides.
At least some of the civilians were apparently taken to a village controlled by Russia-backed separatists. The Russian military said that some chose to stay in separatist areas, while dozens left for Ukrainian-held territory. Ukrainian officials have accused Russian forces of taking civilians against their will to Russia or Russian-controlled areas — charges the Kremlin denies.
As many as 100,000 civilians overall may still be in Mariupol, which had a prewar population of more than 400,000. Russian forces have pounded much of the city to rubble, trapping civilians with little food, water, heat or medicine.
Mariupol, which is situated within Ukraine’s Donbas region, is key to Russia’s campaign in the war-torn country’s east. Its capture would deprive Ukraine of a vital port, allow Russia to establish a land corridor to the Crimean Peninsula, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014, and free up troops for fighting elsewhere in the region.
Mr. Zelenskyy said he hoped more people would be able to leave Mariupol in an organized evacuation on Monday. The city council told residents wanting to leave to gather at a shopping mall to wait for buses.
Mr. Zelenskyy told Greek state television that remaining civilians in the steel plant were afraid to board buses because they feared they would be taken to Russia. He said he had been assured by the U.N. that they would be allowed to go to areas his government controls.
The steel plant evacuation, if successful, would represent rare progress in easing the human cost of the almost 10-week war. Previous attempts to open safe corridors out of the southern port city and other places have broken down, with Ukrainian officials accusing Russian forces of shooting and shelling along agreed-on evacuation routes.
Russia’s shifting focus
U.S. intelligence says it believes Russians alienated by Mr. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine may be trying to get in touch with U.S. intelligence — and the CIA wants them to go to the darknet.
The agency signaled a new push Monday to promote its presence on a part of the internet accessible only through specialized tools that provide more anonymity. The CIA has a darknet site that has the same features as its regular homepage but accessible only through the Tor internet browser, which has encryption features not available on most regular browsers.
The effort comes as U.S. officials closely monitor intelligence reports on Russian military activity inside Ukraine.
A senior U.S. defense official told reporters on background that a majority of the dozen Russian battalion tactical groups that had been massing near Mariupol in recent weeks have now moved north to other battlefronts in eastern Ukraine. The official described Russia’s progress at consolidating its forces in the divided Donbas region of Ukraine as unimpressive so far.
“They’ll move in and declare victory, then withdraw their troops only to let the Ukrainians take it back,” the Defense Department official told reporters at the Pentagon. “There’s a lot of back and forth [with] minimal progress at best.”
Morale remains low among a number of the Russian soldiers who have taken part in what they believed would be a quick military campaign, only to see it drag on for months with no clear end in sight, officials said.
“They are still suffering from poor command and control [and] less than ideal logistics,” the Defense Department official said. “They still have not solved all their logistics problems.”
While the U.S. official said the Russian forces made minimal gains over the weekend, Russia’s Defense Ministry offered an alternative narrative on Monday, asserting that its forces had struck dozens of Ukrainian military targets in the east.
Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said Russian warplanes fired precision-guided missiles to hit more than three dozen Ukrainian targets, including concentrations of troops and weapons, over the last 24 hours. He said a Russian air strike also destroyed an ammunition depot near Chervone in the Zaporizhzhia region, and that a Ukrainian MiG-29 fighter jet was downed near the eastern town of Slovyansk. The announcements couldn’t be independently confirmed.
Ukraine, meanwhile, claimed Monday that its forces had sunk a pair of Russian patrol boats in the Black Sea, using TB2 drones supplied by Turkey.
Officials said the action took place off the coast of Snake Island, which had been the scene of a radio exchange that went viral early in the conflict between Ukrainian fighters and a Russian warship, the Moskva, which itself sank in mid-April following a Ukrainian missile attack.
Ukrainian officials said the patrol boats, known as Raptors, were hit at daybreak on Monday. Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense released a video that appeared to show the attack in progress. “Bayraktar is working,” Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyi, chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, said using the local name for the Turkish drone system that has proven highly effective in the nine-week war.
The patrol boats were reportedly being used to evacuate Russian troops from Snake Island when they were attacked by the drones. The boats can reportedly transport up to 20 people with a range of about 100 miles.
Oil sanctions push
In other developments Monday, European Union energy ministers met in Brussels to discuss new sanctions against the Kremlin, which could include restrictions on Russian oil. But some Russia-dependent members of the 27-nation bloc, including Hungary and Slovakia, are wary of taking tough action.
The 27-nation EU imports around 40% of the gas it consumes from Russia.
While the matter remains under debate, Poland urged its European Union partners on Monday to unite and impose sweeping measures against the import of Russia’s oil and natural gas, and not to cave to pressure from the Putin government to pay for Russian gas in rubles.
“We will call for immediate sanctions on Russian oil and gas,” said Polish Climate and Environment Minister Anna Moskwa. “This is the next, and urgent, and absolute step.”
The Kremlin-controlled energy giant Gazprom cut supplies to Bulgaria and Poland last week after Mr. Putin said “unfriendly” countries must start paying in rubles. Gazprom has claimed Bulgaria and Poland failed to pay their bills in April.
Friction over the issue continues as Washington seeks to re-open its embassy in Kyiv.
American diplomats made a day trip into Ukraine Monday, with U.S. Embassy Charge d’Affaires Kristina Kvien attending a news conference in Lviv to highlight the diplomatic return. American diplomats relocated from the Kyiv embassy to Lviv before the war, then pulled out entirely after Russia began its war on Ukraine in February.
Separately, a top-level U.S. congressional delegation led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was in Warsaw on Monday to express gratitude to Poland for its humanitarian and other support for Ukraine.
Ms. Pelosi and a half dozen U.S. lawmakers met with President Andrzej Duda and Polish lawmakers in Warsaw. The visit followed a weekend visit to Kyiv where they met with Mr. Zelenskyy, pledging to support his country until it defeats Russia.
• Mike Glenn contributed to this article, which is based in part on wire service reports.