After a two-day operation in which more than 100 civilians were evacuated from the last stronghold of Ukrainian resistance in Mariupol, the Azovstal plant came under attack again by Russia, according to the city’s prefecture.
Mariupol became a symbol city of the Ukrainian War. After weeks under siege by Moscow troops, the place where more than 400,000 people lived was reduced to ruins and became the scene of the most serious humanitarian crisis of the conflict.
Since mid-April, however, part of the civilians who still remain in the city and the soldiers who resist the Russian advance have been sheltering in the Azovstal plant. The complex, created during the Soviet period, includes a labyrinth of underground bunkers in which there are an unknown number – estimated to be in the hundreds – of Ukrainians protecting themselves from Russian attacks.
Moscow refers to the civilians occupying Azovstal, however, as “hostages” or “prisoners” of the “Kiev regime”. Part of the narrative is due to the fact that, among Ukraine’s security forces, there are members of the Azov Battalion, a militia linked to Nazi ideologies that emerged in the country in 2014. Among the official justifications for invading the neighbor, Russia cites the mission to “denazify” Ukraine.
In a statement released this Monday (2), the Russian Defense Ministry attributes the operation to evacuate civilians last weekend to Vladimir Putin. He omits, however, that on the 21st, when he claimed victory over Mariupol, the president ordered a siege of Azovstal so that “not even a fly” could escape. At the time, the Russian leader promised to save the lives of those who surrendered to his country’s forces and referred to the shelters under the plant as “catacombs”.
This Monday’s statement counts 126 individuals removed from the plant and from residential areas around the complex. The ministry notes that some civilians “voluntarily decided to remain in the People’s Republic of Donetsk”—the way Moscow has come to refer to the province since recognizing it, along with Lugansk, as independent republics days before the start of the war.
Also according to Russian Defense, the civilians who chose to “go to the territory under the control of the Kiev regime” were handed over to representatives of the United Nations (UN) and the Red Cross – which are, in practice, the two institutions who led the withdrawal operation.
In an evening speech on Sunday (1st), the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, especially thanked the two entities for the success of the operation. “Today, for the first time in every day of the war, this vital corridor has started to function. For the first time, there have been two days of true ceasefire in that territory,” he said.
Civilians evacuated from Azovstal were taken by convoy to the town of Zaporijia, about 200 km northwest of Mariupol, where there is a refugee reception centre.
A new civilian evacuation operation was scheduled for this Monday, but it hasn’t even started. Officially, it is unclear why, but there are reports that the new Russian attacks were the deterrent.
In an interview with the Reuters news agency, Ukrainian captain Sviatoslav Palamar, 39, deputy commander of the Azov Regiment, said the plant was the target of continuous bombing during Sunday night and Monday morning.
He also said that it is possible to hear the voices of people trapped in the bunkers, especially women, children and the elderly, but that Ukrainian forces do not have the necessary equipment to remove them from the rubble.
According to Palamar, the current scenario in Mariupol has become a “great burden” for Zelensky. “As commander-in-chief and as president, he is responsible not only for the civilians who are staying here, but also for the military, responsible for the wounded soldiers who are dying here, who need emergency medical attention,” he said.
As more civilians manage to leave Mariupol, reports on the scale of the tragedy in the city multiply. “Our house is completely destroyed. We had a two-story building. It doesn’t exist anymore, it burned to the ground,” said Ukrainian Natalia Tsintomirska, who arrived in Zaporyjia in a funeral service van.
Ielena Aitulova, 44, told Reuters she had been sheltering in an Azovstal bunker since February 24, the day the war began. “For a month, we ate — more than 40 of us — six cans of food. We made two buckets of soup and spent all day with it.”
When he managed to get out of the shelter, he said at least 40 people were left behind. “The soldiers came and escorted the first 11 people, those who were seriously ill, had asthma or needed insulin, and also three of us, at random.”
