KYIV, Ukraine — An advisor to Ukraine’s presidential office said Saturday that Russian forces were attacking a steel plant that is the last defense stronghold of Ukrainian forces in the strategic port city of Mariupol.
Oleksiy Arestovich, an advisor to the head of Ukraine’s presidential office, said during a briefing that the Russian forces have resumed airstrikes on Azovstal and were trying to storm it.
“The enemy is trying to completely suppress resistance of the defenders of Mariupol in the area of Azovstal,” Arestovich said.
Arestovich’s statement came two days after Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu reported to President Vladimir Putin that the whole of Mariupol, with the exception of Azovstal, had been “liberated” by the Russians.
Putin ordered the Russian military not to storm the plant and instead to block it off in an apparent attempt to stifle the remaining pocket of resistance there.
Ukrainian officials have estimated that about 2,000 of their troops are inside the plant along with about 1,000 sheltering in the facility’s underground tunnels.
????????I am commander of Azov regiment, Denis Prokopenko. I call to the leaders of the world. Right now, in Mariupol, at “Azovstal” steel factory hundreds of civilians are sheltering. Among them – people of all ages, women, children, families of Mariupol defenders.????????? pic.twitter.com/7IG6cEJHud
— (@Polk_Azov) April 18, 2022
Arestovich said the Ukrainian fighters are still holding on despite the resumed attacks and are even trying to counter them.
The Azov Regiment of Ukraine’s National Guard, which has members holed up in the Azovstal steel plant along with other soldiers and civilians, released footage of around two dozen women and children, some of whom said they had been in the mill’s underground tunnels for two months .
The regiment’s deputy commander, Sviatoslav Palamar, told The Associated Press the video was shot Thursday. The contents could not be independently verified. Both Ukrainian and Russian authorities have said the Azovstal plant is the last remaining defense stronghold in Mariupol, which has been under siege since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“We want to see peaceful skies, we want to breathe in fresh air,” one woman in the video said. “You have simply no idea what it means for us to simply eat, drink some sweetened tea. For us, it is already happiness.”
More than 100,000 people — down from a prewar population of about 430,000 — are believed trapped in Mariupol with little food, water or heat, according to Ukrainian authorities. Authorities estimated Friday that about 1,000 civilians remain trapped at Azovstal together with about 2,000 Ukrainian fighters.
The footage showed soldiers giving sweets to children who respond with fist-bumps. One young girl says she and her relatives “haven’t seen neither the sky, nor the sun” since they left home on February 27.
This photo, taken by Maxar Technologies’ GeoEye-1 satellite on April 3, 2022, shows a newly excavated mass grave (the rows near the center top, just under the road) in the Ukrainian town of Manhush, which is close to the besieged port city Mariupol. (Satellite image ©2022 Maxar Technologies)
“We really want to get out of here safely, so that no one gets hurt,” the girl pleads.
Russian President Vladimir Putin declared victory in Mariupol earlier this week and ordered his forces not to storm the steel plant but to seal it off in an apparent bid to starve out the Ukrainians and force them to surrender.
The southern city is of strategic importance to Moscow and has become a symbol of Ukraine’s dogged resistance to the invasion.
Over 20,000 civilians have been killed in Mariupol during the nearly two-month siege, Satellite images released this week showed what appeared to be mass graves near Mariupol, and local officials accused Russia of burying thousands of civilians to conceal the slaughter taking place there.
