The Russian army and pro-Russian forces on Tuesday launched an offensive on the Azovstal factory, the last pocket of Ukrainian resistance in the city of Mariupol, in southeastern Ukraine, from which civilians have been evacuated these last days thanks to a ceasefire.
“Currently, units of the Russian army and the Donetsk People’s Republic, using artillery and aircraft, are beginning to destroy” the “firing positions” of Ukrainian fighters who came out of the factory, said Vadim Astafiev , spokesperson for the Russian Ministry of Defense in a speech, the video of which was released by Russian agencies.
The spokesman for the Russian armed forces claimed that the Ukrainian Azov regiment, which is defending the plant, “used” the declared ceasefire to evacuate civilians, to get out of the basements of the steel plant and “taking up firing positions on the territory and in the factory buildings”.
“We were bombarded all night […]two women were killed and now an Azovstal assault is underway,” Sviatoslav Palamar, deputy commander of the Azov regiment, told the Ukrainska Pravda news site.
He called on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to “strong action because the situation is very difficult”.
A hundred civilians were evacuated this weekend from the huge Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol, a strategic port in southern Donbass almost entirely under Russian control.
To see in video