Kremlin troops defy president and bomb Azovstal plant

RUSSIA continued to bomb Mariupol’s last bastion of resistance at the Azovstal steel plant yesterday despite calling a ceasefire, as new video footage revealed the deep network of tunnels protecting Ukrainian troops and civilians.

Oleksiy Arestovych, a Ukrainian presidential aide, said Russian troops defied their leaders’ own orders by attacking the plant in the southern city.

He said: “The enemy continues to attack our defences in the area of the Azovstal plant, using aircraft, artillery... firing with tanks and trying to advance with assault groups, violating the order of their own supreme commander.”

The assault came despite Russia’s announcement of a ceasefire, which was supposedly called to allow civilians to leave the besieged plant. Russia has repeatedly been accused of violating ceasefires and forcibly deporting Ukrainian civilians to camps in Russia.

“Today, the Russian side once again announced the existence of a corridor for civilians to leave Azovstal. This could be believed if the Russians had not destroyed humanitarian corridors many times before,” Iryna Vereshchuk, the Ukrainian deputy prime minister, wrote on the Telegram messaging app.

“It is important to understand that a humanitarian corridor opens by the agreement of both sides. A corridor announced unilaterally does not provide security, and therefore is not a humanitarian corridor,” she said.

She added Ukraine had “appealed to UN secretary general Antonio Guterres to be the initiator and guarantor of the humanitarian corridor from Azovstal for civilians”.

New video footage posted on social media has revealed how the tunnels beneath Azovstal are deep and meandering, making them an ideal location for defending against Russian invaders.

In the clip, posted by the news aggregator Visegrad 24, a camera moved around a series of maze-like corridors.

Civilians hiding beneath the plant are facing dire conditions. Recent videos from the tunnels appeared to show babies having to wear improvised nappies made from plastic bags.

Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, recently issued a public order for his forces not to storm the plant, which suggests he knew Russia would face severe military losses if it tried to do so.