MYKOLAIV, Ukraine — The mayor of this embattled southern port city, which has been under attack by Russian forces since the start of the war, has called on “anyone who wants to survive” to leave, because “it is not clear when this will all be over. †
The mayor, Oleksandr Senkevych, said in an interview with Radio Liberty that the city was shelled daily and that “about 80 percent of that ammunition is cluster munitions” fired by Russian multiple-launch missile systems.
A major exodus from Mykolaiv, once an important hub of Soviet shipbuilding, has already taken place. About 230,000 people still live in the city, less than half of the 480,000 inhabitants in peacetime. Many are older and about 80 percent of them live on food and clothing distributed by aid organizations.
The strategic importance of the city is central. Nearly overrun in the early weeks of fighting, Mykolaiv’s defenders pushed Russian forces back to a distance of at least 20 miles to their closest point. Yet the Russian army is close enough to inflict casualties and damage with missiles and artillery at will.
The mayor’s statement was somewhat surprising, in that Mykolaiv’s combative, never-ending spirit has become a symbol of Ukrainian resistance. The city is quieter than in March, when the bombing was relentless. Departure has been delayed to a trickle.
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Among those still in Mykolaiv are tens of thousands of people who have already moved once, from surrounding villages that have been taken or are immediately threatened by Russian troops.
Vitaliy Kim, the head of the regional military administration, has become something of a national idol for his consistent bravado in video and other posts, calling the Russian military “stupid” among other derogatory comments.
Mykolaiv stands between the Russian invasion force and Odessa, Ukraine’s largest maritime city 70 miles to the west. A landlocked Ukraine without access to the Black Sea, the channel for much of its grain and other exports, would be a severely compromised power. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has made no secret of coveting Odessa, founded by a Russian empress, as part of his own imperial schemes.
“Shellings are coming from the Kherson region,” the mayor said in the Radio Liberty interview, referring to the city about 40 miles to the east that Russian troops captured early in the war. “That’s why it’s impossible to activate the siren beforehand. The grenades explode in the city and then the siren goes off.” He added that “high-precision” cruise missiles had destroyed the city’s infrastructure.
Mayors in other parts of Ukraine have advised residents not actively involved in the resistance to fire on cities. But Mr. Senkevych’s request seemed more drastic. The interview was published Friday, but it is not clear when it was conducted.
At least 111 civilians have been killed in Mykolaiv since the end of February. Military casualties are unknown.
A Russian missile hit a residential area of Mykolaiv just over a week ago, killing one and injuring 20. Another hit grain and vegetable oil terminals in the port on Wednesday. At the same time, however, Ukrainian forces counterattacked in the Kherson area; they say they have recaptured some villages.
In a separate interview this week with DailyExpertNews, 40-year-old Senkevych said he expected the war to last “at least until April or May next year.” He described the people still in the city as elderly people “ready to die here”, comparing them, in an apparently strange analogy, to pharaohs “who will not leave their pyramids”.
The evacuations were underway at four to eight buses a day at the start of the war, but had now been reduced to one or two a week, the mayor said. There was no suggestion in The Times interview that the mayor, whose own wife and two children left Mykolaiv within “2.5 hours of the first bombing”, thought anyone who wanted to survive should leave.
Senkevych said in that interview that he had received messages from Russian troops urging him to surrender. “Mayor, you have to give up, you don’t want to end up like Mariupol,” said one of these messages, referring to the Ukrainian city on the Sea of Azov that besieged, flattened and eventually captured Russia.
“They think the mayor may decide to surrender!” he said dismissively.
Marc Santora contributed reporting from Warsaw.