73 DAYS IN HELL
Army chief lays bare ordeal inside besieged steel plant
A UKRAINE army chief who has survived 73 days of hell holed up in Mariupol’s besieged steel plant knows every hour could be his last.
Yet even the constant fear of death will not stop Ilya Samoilenko defending the destroyed works.
As rockets and shells rain down, Samoilenko, who lost an eye and arm defusing Russian mines earlier in the war, told of the battle to hold the Azovstal plant.
The officer, 36, revealed the heroism of the troops and doctors trapped with him.
And he laid bare the savagery of Vladimir Putin’s forces, recounting how photos of a soldier’s execution by Russians – who put a bag over his head – were sent from the dead man’s phone to his mother.
Samoilenko, who is in charge of army intelligence and reconnaissance in the factory, said: “The Russians are not interested in witnesses surviving at all.”
The day we spoke to him, three of his colleagues had been killed and six wounded.
He said: “We have been in a locked down place for 73 days now, without replenishing our supplies.
“You go brush your teeth in the morning and know you might get killed doing that.
“It’s like an extreme sport or some twisted game where you play the role of the target.”
In the past 24 hours, about 2000 soldiers in Ukraine’s Azov Regiment have been attacked by 34 Russian aircraft and fired on by the Russia’s navy and from tanks and artillery.
Hundreds of civilians who were sheltering in the plant’s many underground tunnels have been evacuated in the past seven days.
Russia has taken the whole city of Mariupol except for the works.
Samoilenko added: “The Azovstal factory area is completely bombed out. There are huge bomb craters, some of them up to 20 metres in diameter. It resembles the surface of the moon.
“Each day bombs are dropped, shots are fired at us.”
With withering understatement, he said: “Conditions are very far from ideal. Each of us, apart from providing for our daily life, is fighting. The supply of medicines and provisions is limited. Many critical medications aren’t available. The wounded needing specific care can’t get medical supplies. It’s a problem we can’t solve alone.”
The Ukrainians have been wounded by bullets, shrapnel, mines and falls. Those rescued from the rubble have suffered from compression.
“Amputated limbs, arms, legs – not problems that can be easily solved in conditions of an improvised field hospital.
“Most of the amputations are when a limb has been damaged or torn off already by an explosion, or by a shrapnel or a bullet.
“Here in Azovstal the doctors are doing the most unbelievable things, heroic deeds. The medics are real heroes.”
Samoilenko’s tension shows when asked how much food and water they have left.
He said: “I can’t believe my ears when I hear that. What is that, people are setting a counter until we die?”
He said Russia, despite UN agreements, continued shelling while people were evacuated.
“Their military is capable of any action beyond human understanding. This is a terrorist tactic.”
He spoke of “Dan”, a fighter captured in the city.
Samoilenko said: “After about four days his mother received messages from his phone with photos of her son, executed by the Russian military, strangled, with a bag on his head. “Prisoners of war who surrender in large numbers are a huge gift to the enemy. A gift that is both ideological and psychological. We cannot give such a gift to the enemy.”
The works have become a key battleground in the war and Putin is furious his army cannot take it.
In April, he called a plan to storm the works “impractical”. He then ordered troops to blockade the area “so a fly can’t get through”.
But he then appeared to change tack and heavy bombing intensified again.