Last stand at steelworks as defiant Ukraine fighters refuse to give up
THE last defenders of a besieged steel plant sheltering hundreds of
Ukrainians are continuing to fight against Russian troops.
The battle for the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol has been raging for days, with some civilians managing to escape after weeks with little food or water.
Ukrainian military officials said their troops were continuing to defend the facility, which has become the focus of Russian bombardment in recent days.
Experts have warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to claim the plant and destroy the last remaining defenders of the city, leading to the capture of the significant port area.
If this happens, it would further Russia’s efforts to cut Ukraine off from the sea entirely.
It is thought Putin may be escalating the battle in Mariupol ahead of Victory Day on Monday.
The event is the largest patriotic Russian holiday, and marks the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany in the Second World War.
After 10 weeks of war, Ukraine’s military said it has recaptured some areas in the south and repelled other attacks in the east, further frustrating Putin’s ambitions.
Ukrainian and Russian forces are fighting village by village as Moscow struggles to gain momentum in the eastern industrial heartland of the Donbas.
Russia switched its focus to that region – where Moscow-backed separatists have fought Ukrainian forces for years – after a stiffer-thanexpected resistance bogged its troops down and thwarted its initial goal of overrunning the capital Kyiv.
In an interview with The Associated Press yesterday, Belarus president and ally of Putin, Alexander Lukashenko, said he had not expected the Russian offensive to “drag on this way”.
Some Russian troops used ally Belarus as a launch pad for the invasion on February 24, and Lukashenko publicly supported the operation.
“But I am not immersed in this problem enough to say whether it goes according to plan, like the Russians say, or like I feel it,” the authoritarian leader said.
In the most searing example of how Ukrainian forces have slowed Russia’s progress, Ukrainian fighters are holed up in the tunnels and bunkers under the sprawling Azovstal steel mill in Mariupol – the last pocket of resistance in a city that is otherwise controlled by Moscow’s forces.
Civilians, believed to number around a few hundred, are also trapped inside the plant.
Ukraine said its fighters drove back a Russian assault into the giant mill, which was also being bombed from above.
“The Russian troops entered the territory of Azovstal but were kicked out by our defenders,” Oleksiy Arestovych, a presidential adviser, said in remarks on Ukrainian television.
“We can say that the fighting is ongoing.”
The Kremlin denied that there is any ground assault.
Mariupol’s fall would be a major battlefield success for Moscow, depriving Ukraine of a vital port and allowing Russia to establish a land corridor to the Crimean Peninsula, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014, and free up troops to fight elsewhere in the Donbas.
With his troops making slow progress elsewhere, Putin may be looking to declare a win at the plant in time for Victory Day.
Some have also suggested he could use the celebrations to expand what he calls the “special military operation”.
A declaration of all-out war would allow the Russian leader to introduce martial law and mobilise reservists to make up for significant troop losses.
The Kremlin has dismissed the speculation.
The city, and the plant in particular, have come to symbolise the misery inflicted by the war.
The Russians have pulverised most of Mariupol in a two-month siege that has trapped civilians with little food, water, medicine or heat.
Civilians sheltering inside the plant have perhaps suffered even more.
About 100 of them were evacuated over the weekend – the first time some saw daylight in months.
The Russian government said it would open another evacuation corridor from the plant during certain hours yesterday through to tomorrow.
But there was no immediate confirmation of those arrangements from other parties and many previous assurances from the Kremlin have fallen through, with the Ukrainians blaming continued fighting by the Russians.
As the battle raged in Mariupol, Russian forces shelled elsewhere in the Donbas and also kept up their bombardment of railway stations and other supply-line targets across the country – part of an effort to disrupt the supply of western arms, which have been critical to Ukraine’s defence.
The Russian troops entered the territory of Azovstal but were kicked out