Residents of the besieged city, numbering more than 400,000 before the invasion, have been without electricity, water, communications or modern medical care since early March. Many have run out of food and medicine after shoplifting. Others cook communal meals in the open. In all this, the analysts pointed out that the Ukrainian forces surpassed the Russians en masse and predicted that the city would fall. But the Ukrainian troops — from the army, the border guards, and the right-wing nationalist paramilitary Azov Battalion — endured. They have resorted underground to the massive Soviet-era Mariupol operations, including the Azovstal steelworks and seaport sections, which have an extensive network of tunnels. In recent days, the end of the siege seems to be approaching. On Saturday, the Russian Defense Ministry claimed that the city had been cleared by Ukrainian fighters, except for some who are still stranded in Azovstal. After midnight, he demanded that they surrender. Russian and Ukrainian military allegations made during the war cannot be independently verified. The occupation of Mariupol will give a huge boost to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s campaign for Ukraine, allowing Moscow to complete a land bridge between Crimea and the cities it occupies in southern Ukraine. It will also free up resources for the impending Moscow attack on Donbas. For Ukrainians, the preservation of Mariupol has become a symbol of the nation’s resistance to an invasion that has killed thousands of civilians and caused hundreds of billions of dollars in damage. Azov’s Telegram channel posted a video last week in which Denys Prokopenko, the city’s Azov regiment commander, said the “real men who chose the path of war” were still defending the city. He denounced those who had surrendered for choosing “the path of shame”. In the video, shot on a brick wall, Prokopenko sat next to Serhiy Volina, commander of the 36th Marine Brigade. The two groups successfully joined forces to defend Mariupol, he said. Denis Prokopenko, commander of the Azov Regiment in Mariupol, with Serhii Volyna, commander of the 36th Marine Brigade © YouTube President Volodymyr Zelensky admitted in an interview with Ukrainian media on Saturday that the situation in Mariupol “is definitely not improving”, with its army excluding many wounded and dead. However, he added: “The boys are defending themselves heroically.” Igor Yavorsky, a retiree who was evacuated from Mariupol by bus on Saturday to Zaporizhzhia in the north, said the troops were fighting well “but need help – military help”. Fugitives, humanitarian workers and other Ukrainians in contact with people in Mariupol painted a picture of a force still prevalent in Azovstal and the port area. Andriy Biletsky, founder of Azov, told the Financial Times that he believed that out of just under 4,000 troops in Mariupol at the start of the invasion, about 2,000 remained active in the city, including those of Ukrainian Marines from the 36th Brigade. large numbers of Azov fighters, soldiers of the 56th Infantry Brigade, as well as border guards and volunteer fighters. “As for how they survive, Mariupol is a big city and there are a lot of big buildings made of reinforced concrete and steel and a lot of underground passages,” he said. “All this together helps a little.”
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The fighters were facing scarce food and drinking water, he said. Ukrainian helicopters had dropped emergency supplies, including weapons and medicine, through an “air bridge”, though he did not say if they would continue to do so. Bilecki said doctors and nurses were helping, but working underground, as in all of Mariupol, due to a shortage of medicines, including antibiotics and anesthetics. “This causes a large number of people to die or be mutilated after gangrene, like in the 19th century,” he said. The Russian Defense Ministry and pro-Russian commentators claimed on April 13 that more than 1,000 Ukrainian Marines had surrendered, and released a video showing dozens of them holding their hands behind their heads. However, Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to Zelensky’s office, said the number delivered was “much smaller”, adding that some of the Marines had joined Azov forces. After midnight on Saturday, the Russian Ministry of Defense asked the troops that are still holding on to Mariupol to surrender, “taking into account the catastrophic situation in the Azovstal metallurgical plant, as well as in terms of purely humanitarian principles.” The lives of all those who laid down their arms will be saved, he said. Some Ukrainian troops have sought refuge at the Azovstal plant © Anatoliy Zhdanov / Kommersant / Eyevine In a besieged city with few journalists and severely damaged communications, it is difficult to confirm facts. The remaining residents, believed to number 100,000, have shared reports and images on social media despite connectivity issues. In an interview on Saturday, Zelensky cited an estimate by the Mariupol regional administration that about 20,000 civilians had died, but noted that the official who did the counting was not in the city. The Ukrainian president accused Russia of refusing to abide by the agreement on humanitarian corridors from Mariupol during Turkish-mediated talks. “I honestly do not trust the Russian negotiators,” he said. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) left Mariupol on March 15 after conditions became “impossible,” said Alyona Sinenko, a spokeswoman for the group. The ICRC tried to evacuate the residents safely through humanitarian corridors due to a lack of agreement between the warring parties, but managed to evacuate more than 1,000 in an escort on 6 April. Ukrainian charities have rented private buses and found volunteer drivers willing to risk the Russian bombing and rescue people trapped in the city. According to volunteers in Zaporizhzhia, Russian and pro-Russian separatist troops in Mariupol misinformed residents seeking to flee, warning them not to enter Ukrainian territory. “They say, ‘Your men will be arrested at checkpoints and taken to the army,’” said Oleksandr Sosnovskyi, a volunteer. “They want to evacuate them to Russia.” An evacuee holds a cat while waiting to board a bus leaving Mariupol on April 5 © Alexander Ermochenko / Reuters According to Lyudmila Denisova, Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman, more than 135,000 people from Mariupol have been transferred across the border to Russia since the start of the war. In the Ukrainian territory of Zaporizhzhia, a suburban department store and a garden center have been converted into a medical facility to receive people arriving from the war zone. Children who arrive at the center typically suffer from dehydration, diarrhea, and abdominal pain, and adults from post-traumatic stress, depression, and anxiety, according to Wilson Bernales, a volunteer physician in Las Vegas. “Apart from that, everyone is crying because they lost their homes.” Follow on Twitter: @JohnReedwrites
