They were able to leave the hell of the fights for an uncertain future. In Mariupol, the large city in south-eastern Ukraine transformed into a field of ruins, a hundred civilians were able to leave without clashes, Sunday, May 1, the Azovstal factory, the last pocket of Ukrainian resistance in this strategic port of the Donbass almost entirely under Russian control. These evacuations are a first for Ukrainian soldiers and civilians, refugees in this vast steel site, besieged and pounded by the Russian army for long weeks. While kyiv is struggling to negotiate a sustainable humanitarian corridor, franceinfo takes stock of the situation.
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A first evacuation after intense negotiations
The talks between the Ukrainian government and Vladimir Putin’s regime are starting to bear fruit. This Sunday indeed saw “more than 100 civilians, including women and children, flee hostilities”announced the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, during his daily video address on Facebook (document subtitled in English). A deliverance which comes after multiple aborted attempts, the Russian forces not having reached an agreement so far with the UN and the Ukrainian authorities.
“There is not a single day when we have not tried to find a solution for our fellow citizens”assured President Zelensky, who specified that the civilians evacuees from the Azovstal complex were heading towards the part of the country under Ukrainian control. They were expected on Monday at Zaporijia, a large city located 200 km west of Mariupol.
Our team is currently participating in an ongoing operation to facilitate the safe passage of civilians out of the Azovstal plant & Mariupol towards Zaporizhzhia.
This complex operation is conducted in coordination with the parties to the conflict & the @A. pic.twitter.com/chIRndk0E0
— ICRC (@ICRC) May 1, 2022
UN representatives and Red Cross teams, which took care of the civilians released from the industrial complex on Sunday, are still at the scene and hope “to be able to repeat this type of operation as soon as possible”, explained Monday to franceinfo an official of the Red Cross in kyiv. The NGO, like the UN, wants to remain extremely cautious and does not communicate more details on the evacuation, for fear of “endangering civilians” as well as humanitarian convoys. No new wave of evacuations has yet been announced.
About 2,000 Ukrainian fighters entrenched in the factory
The massive Azovstal steel complex, which spans 12 square kilometres, has seen hundreds of soldiers from the Ukrainian side retreat as the Russian military and pro-Russian separatists tighten their grip on the port city of Mariupol. Kyiv and Moscow agree that approximately 2,000 fighters are still entrenched in these installations, whose network of tunnels makes it possible to organize ambushes and thus repel the adversary.
Among these soldiers are a majority of members of the Azov battalion, this controversial military group which takes its name from the Sea of Azov and which has been attached to the Ukrainian armed forces since 2014. After having tried to counter the Russian invasion, members of the 36th marine rifle brigade also retreated to the site.
Russia further asserts that “foreign mercenaries” would also be holed up in the factory, and repeatedly accused the beleaguered fighters (in English) to use the civilians present as “human shields” – which kyiv has systematically denied. The Russian army also continues to invite combatants to lay down their weapons in order to be able to leave the site alive. A guarantee deemed insufficient by the Ukrainian soldiers, who survive by rationing water and food.
Hundreds of civilians still taking refuge underground
In addition to these military elements, the industrial site of Azovstal also saw an influx of residents of Mariupol fleeing the repeated bombardments of the Russian army at the beginning of March. The great port city had a population of half a million before the war. There are still between 100,000 and 120,000 people left there, according to the Ukrainian authorities. The Ukrainian side also claims that at least 20,000 people are believed to have died there since the start of the Russian siege in early March, and that 90% of the town’s homes have been destroyed by bombardment – a figure which has not yet been independently verified.
How many civilians are still refugees in this steel complex? Hard to say for sure. A few days ago, kyiv declared that a thousand people were hidden in the bowels of the factory. A figure confirmed by Sergei Olov, the mayor of Mariupol, at the microphone of BFMTV on Thursday. To escape Russian strikes, civilians and soldiers live underground and can move through the miles of factory tunnels, as RTBF reported. On site, the living conditions are described as “really tough” by the Ukrainians who managed to leave the complex.
Despite the evacuation organized on Sunday, uncertainty hangs over the fate of the Ukrainians holed up in the factory. The hypothesis of a withdrawal of the Russian army seems increasingly compromised. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Sunday that Russian soldiers “do not adjust[aie]nt artificially their actions” as of May 9, day of the Nazi surrender to the Allies in 1945 – which is usually celebrated with great fanfare by the Kremlin. Above all, taking full control of Mariupol would allow Russia to have all the major ports in the Sea of Azov, located between Russia and the Crimean peninsula, which it had annexed in 2014.