After almost two months of siege and bombardment, the last Ukrainian troops are hidden in the Azovstal steelworks, one of the largest in Europe, which has kilometers of tunnels. Putin determined to stop the final assault on that dangerous place and instead ordered “to block the entire area in such a way that not even a fly gets out.”
“We have to think about the lives of our soldiers and officers, they don’t have to go into those catacombs and crawl underground,” he explained at the meeting with his defense minister.
Some 2,000 Ukrainian soldiers rejected Russian ultimatums and remained entrenched in the steel mill, according to Moscow.
The Ukrainian authorities say that there are also about 1,000 civilians there. The Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs asked to create a humanitarian corridor to evacuate these inhabitants, who “do not trust Russian troops.”
Mariupol has been one of the places where the Russian offensive has concentrated since shortly after the invasion, on February 24. Controlling that port on the Sea of Azov would allow Moscow to unite the pro-Russian territories of Donbas and the Crimean peninsula, already annexed in 2014. Authorities estimate that some 20,000 people died in Mariupol, due to bombing or lack of water, food and electricity.
The Russian army has controlled much of the city for days and even allowed the entry of some Western journalists who were able to see its devastated streets. During the siege, civilian evacuations were rare and dangerous. Even so, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Irina Vereshchuk indicated that four groups with civilians were able to leave the city.
“It is important to understand that the lives that are still there are in the hands of one person: Vladimir Putin. And all deaths from now on will also be in their hands,” the city’s mayor Vadym Boichenko said in an interview. “There were no plans to release anything. It was a plan of destruction,” said Boichenko, who estimated that 90% of the port city had been damaged or destroyed since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24.
“Today, at all levels, we only talk about one thing: that we need a ceasefire, that we need a complete evacuation of the 100,000 residents of Mariupol who are prisoners of the Russian Army and that we need to free all the people who are in Azovstal. ”.
Russia withdrew its troops from northern Ukraine and the outskirts of kyiv at the end of March and concentrated its offensive in the east and south of the country. “Russian artillery fire continues along the entire front line,” the Ukrainian authorities said. The governor of Lugansk, Sergei Gaidai, urged civilians to evacuate the region as soon as possible, because “the situation is getting complicated from hour to hour.”
The war in Ukraine has left more than 7.7 million internally displaced and more than five million have left the country, according to the UN.
Concern for the civilian population increased after the discovery of dozens of bodies in towns near kyiv occupied by Russia until the end of March.
The battle for total control of Donbas and part of the south of the country is expected to be long. Taking Mariupol may allow Moscow to strengthen its positions further north, near Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city. But the resistance promises to be fierce, especially with the increase in aid from Western countries.
To make up for economic losses caused by the war, Ukraine needs “about $7 billion” a month, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in Washington.
Source: Ambito
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