(Pokrovsk) Russia’s claimed seizure of the Mariupol steel plant that has become a symbol of Ukrainian tenacity is giving Russian President Vladimir Putin a much-needed victory in the war he started. It comes to complete a siege of almost three months which left the port city in ruins where more than 20,000 inhabitants would have died.
Posted at 11:54 a.m.
After the Russian Defense Ministry announced late Friday that its forces had removed the last Ukrainian fighters from the plant’s underground tunnels, concern has grown for Ukrainian defenders who are now prisoners in Russian hands.
Denis Pushilin, leader of a region in eastern Ukraine controlled by Moscow-backed separatists, said on Saturday that Ukrainians considered heroes by their fellow citizens were sure to be brought to justice for their actions in time. of war.
“I believe a tribunal is inevitable here. I believe that justice must be restored. There is a demand for it from ordinary people, from society and, probably, from the sensible part of the world community,” Russian news agency Tass quoted Pushilin as saying.
Russian officials and state media have repeatedly tried to label the fighters who holed up in the Azovstal steelworks as neo-Nazis. Among the more than 2,400 defenders of the plant were members of the Azov Regiment, a national guard unit with far-right roots.
Ukraine’s government has not commented on Russia’s claim to have seized Azovstal, which for weeks remained Mariupol’s last obstacle, and thus fulfill Moscow’s long-sought goal of controlling the city , home to a strategic seaport.
The Ukrainian military this week told the fighters holed up in the factory, hundreds of them wounded, that their mission was over and they could get out. She described their extraction as an evacuation, not a mass surrender.
The impact of Russia’s declared victory on the wider war in Ukraine remained unclear. Many Russian troops had already been redeployed from Mariupol elsewhere in the conflict, which began with the Russian invasion of its neighbor on February 24.
Photo ALEXANDER ERMOCHENKO, REUTERS
Russian authorities have threatened to investigate some of the steel plant defenders for war crimes and bring them to justice.
Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov reported on Saturday that Russia had destroyed a Ukrainian special operations base in the Black Sea region of Odessa as well as a large stockpile of weapons supplied by the West in the Zhytomyr region of northern Ukraine. There was no confirmation from the Ukrainian side.
In its morning operational report, the Ukrainian military staff reported heavy fighting in much of eastern Ukraine, including in the regions of Sievierodonetsk, Bakhmut and Avdiivka.
Since failing to reach and capture Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, Russia has focused its offensive on the industrial heartland in the east of the country. Russian-backed separatists have controlled parts of the Donbass region since 2014, and Moscow wants to expand the territory under its control.
Mariupol, which is part of Donbass, was blockaded at the start of the war and became a chilling example for people in the rest of the country of the hunger, terror and death they could face if the Russians surrounded their communities.
As the end approached at the steelworks, the wives of the fighters who had resisted told of what they feared would be their last contact with their husbands.
Olga Boiko, a soldier’s wife, wiped away tears as she shared the words her husband wrote to her on Thursday: “Hello. We surrender, I don’t know when I will contact you and if I will. I like you. Kisses. Goodbye. »
The wife of another fighter, Natalia Zaritskaya, said her husband had reported earlier this week that of the 32 soldiers he served with, only eight survived and most were seriously injured.
“Now they are on the way from hell to hell. Every inch of this path is deadly,” Ms.me Zaritskaya.
The colossal steelworks, occupying some 11 square kilometers, had been a battleground for weeks. The dwindling group of under-equipped fighters resisted with the help of aerial supply drops, drawing Russian airstrikes, artillery and tank fire, before their government ordered them to abandon the factory and to save himself.
President Zelensky revealed in an interview published Friday that Ukrainian helicopter pilots braved Russian anti-aircraft fire to transport medicine, food and water to the steel plant as well as recover bodies and rescue fighters wounded.
A “very large” number of pilots have died during their daring missions, he said. “These are absolutely heroic people, who knew it would be difficult, who knew that flying would be next to impossible. »
Russia said the commander of the Azov regiment was evacuated from the factory in an armored vehicle due to the residents’ alleged hatred of him.
No evidence of Ukrainian antipathy towards the nationalist regiment has emerged. The Kremlin seized on the regiment’s far-right origins in its drive to portray the invasion as a battle against Nazi influence in Ukraine.
Russian authorities have threatened to investigate some of the steel plant defenders for war crimes and bring them to justice.
The fall of Mariupol advances the desire of Russian leaders to essentially create a land bridge between their territory and the Crimean peninsula annexed in 2014.
It is also helping President Putin offset some serious setbacks, including the failed takeover of Kyiv, the sinking of the Russian Navy flagship in the Black Sea, and the continued resistance that has stalled the offensive in the east of Ukraine.
The difficult documentation of crimes
With Mariupol under Russian control, Ukrainian authorities may face delays in documenting evidence of alleged Russian atrocities in the city, including the shelling of a maternity hospital and a theater where civilians had been hiding. .
Satellite images in April showed what appeared to be mass graves just outside Mariupol, where local officials accused Russia of covering up the massacre by burying up to 9,000 civilians.
Earlier this month, hundreds of civilians were evacuated from the factory during the humanitarian ceasefires and spoke of the terror of the relentless shelling, the damp conditions underground and the fear of not being able to survive. come out alive.
At one point during the siege, Pope Francis lamented that Mariupol had become a “city of martyrs”.
It is estimated that 100,000 of the 450,000 people who resided there before the war remain. Many, trapped by Russia’s siege, were left without food, water and electricity.
The managing director of Metinvest, a multinational that owns the Azovstal plant and another steel mill, Ilyich, in Mariupol, spoke about the devastation of the city in an interview published Saturday in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera.
“The Russians are trying to clean it up [la ville] to hide their crimes, the newspaper wrote citing Metinvest director Yuriy Ryzhenkov. The inhabitants are trying to make the city work, to make the water work again. »
“But the sewage system is damaged, there has been flooding and infections are to be feared” from drinking the water, he said.
The Ilyich steel plant still has intact infrastructure, but if the Russians try to make it work, the Ukrainians will refuse to resume their work there, according to Mr. Ryzhenkov.
“We will never work under Russian occupation,” he concluded.
With Yuras Karmanau in Lviv, Andrea Rosa in Kharkiv, Frances D’Emilio in Rome.