As Russian forces encircle the key strategic target of Mykolaiv, on the road to the Black Sea, the man in charge of the city's defences warns that the attacking troops “will become dog food”.
Ukrainian General Dmytro Marchenko, who is in command of the garrison at Mykolaiv, vows that his men would kill ten Russians for each civilian killed in the battle for the major Black Sea shipbuilding centre.
One Russian attack has already been repelled, and General Marchenko says the streets are littered with Russian dead.
“It’s unpleasant to say this,” he told The Times, “but their corpses are food for stray dogs.
“We’re not able to retrieve them because of continuing Russian fire in those areas.”
He added that many civilians had been killed in the Russian assault, and he knew precisely who was responsible.
“We know who these people are,” he said. “We have a vast amount of intelligence, including much from our American partners, that consists of photos where we can see faces. We can see when those guys go for a p***”.
Russian soldiers that surrender, he promised, will be allowed to live, adding: “Also, we guarantee that no harm will come to Russian tank crews if they come toward our lines with their main guns turned away from us."
But there will be no amnesty for war criminals, General Marchenko warns: “If they have committed crimes, they will be tried but they will be alive. The rest of them will become dog food.”
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The Russian attackers are becoming increasingly worn down, General Marchenko told the New York Times: "We fight them day and night, we don't let them sleep. They get up in the morning disoriented, tired. Their moral psychological state is simply broken."
Some of the fiercest fighting is now in the south of the country, towards Black Sea lynchpin Odessa. Ukrainian forces are still in control of Mykolaiv, but it is under very heavy bombardment from Russian aircraft and artillery.
City authorities said they had to put out several fires in residential areas that had been caused by Russian rocket attacks.
General Marchenko’s comrade Colonel Sviatoslav Stetsenko, vows that his troops will fight to the death to defend their city. He had retired from the military in 2010, but re-enlisted in the wake of the Russian invasion.
As a young soldier, Colonel Stetsenko. 56, once served in the Soviet military and marched alongside many of the current generation of Russian commanders.
"They are now my enemy," he told the New York Times. "And each one of them who comes here with arms, who comes here as an invader, I will do everything I can to ensure that he remains as fertiliser for our land."
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