(Kyiv) “We may be living our last days, even our last hours,” a beleaguered Ukrainian officer in Mariupol said, calling on the international community to “extract” them, in a Facebook post on Wednesday.
Updated yesterday at 10:25 p.m.
“The enemy outnumbers us ten times,” said Serguiy Volyna, a commander of the 36and brigade of the national navy, entrenched in the vast steel complex of Azovstal in Mariupol (south-eastern Ukraine), besieged by Russian forces.
“We call on and beg all world leaders to help us. We ask them to use the extraction procedure and take us to the territory of a third country,” he added.
According to Commander Volyna, the Russian army has “the advantage in the air, in artillery, in ground forces, in equipment and in tanks”.
“We are defending only one point – the Azovstal factory – where in addition to soldiers there are also civilians who have become victims of this war”, he continued.
Russia on Tuesday called on the last defenders of the city of Mariupol to end their “senseless resistance”, promising “life will be saved” to Ukrainian fighters entrenched in the Azovstal complex if they surrender.
The Ukrainian port of Mariupol, besieged by Russian troops since early March, is still the scene of street fighting, the Ukrainian governor of the region said on Tuesday in an interview with CNN.
“Fighting is ongoing in Mariupol. These are street battles and not only with small arms, but also tank battles on the streets of the city,” said Pavlo Kyrylenko, governor of the Donetsk region.
This information was unverifiable from an independent source.
Areas where Ukrainian fighters are concentrated, starting with the area of the Azovstal metallurgical complex, “are under heavy shelling, but the defenses are holding up,” Kyrylenko continued.
“There are certain neighborhoods where street fighting continues,” he added, without giving further details: “You can’t say that the Russians are controlling them.”
Ukrainian officials also said that the Russian army had hit a hospital near Azovstal on Tuesday with “very heavy bombs”, their versions differing as to possible victims.
Businessman and local MP Sergiï Tarouta initially announced that 300 people were there, but an adviser to the mayor of Mariupol, Petro Andryushchenko, later claimed that “no one has been hiding in the area for a long time around Azovstal, especially in the already destroyed hospital”.
Sviatoslav Palamar, a deputy commander of the nationalist Azov regiment which includes most of the Ukrainian defenders, for his part affirmed on television that “the Azovstal factory was bombed and almost completely destroyed”.
Last week, the Russian Defense Ministry claimed that 1,000 Ukrainian soldiers had surrendered in Mariupol. But several hundred others, according to pro-Russian separatists, are still entrenched in the huge Azovstal factory where they are leading a fierce resistance.
“At least 1,000 civilians, most of them women, children and the elderly” are also holed up in the plant’s underground shelters, the Mariupol city council said on Telegram on Tuesday.
Russia on Tuesday called on the entire Ukrainian army to “lay down their arms” and the last defenders of Mariupol to cease their “senseless resistance”, 24 hours after having issued them an ultimatum that remained a dead letter.
Taking Mariupol would allow the Russians to consolidate their coastal territorial gains along the Sea of Azov by linking the Donbass region, partly controlled by pro-Russian separatists, to Crimea annexed by Moscow in 2014.