Western Daily Press (Saturday)
New bid to save civilians in Mariupol steel plant
ANEW international effort raced to rescue more civilians from the tunnels under a besieged steel plant in Mariupol and the Ukrainian city at large, even as fighters holed up at the sprawling complex made their last stand to prevent Moscow’s complete takeover of the strategic port.
The fight in the last Ukrainian stronghold of a city reduced to ruins by the Russian onslaught appeared increasingly desperate.
It comes amid growing speculation that President Vladimir Putin wants to finish the battle for Mariupol so he can present a triumph to the Russian people in time for Monday’s Victory Day, the biggest patriotic holiday on the Russian calendar.
Some 2,000 Ukrainian fighters, by Russia’s most recent estimate, are holed up in a vast maze of tunnels and bunkers beneath Azovstal steelworks and they have repeatedly refused to surrender.
Ukraine said a few hundred civilians were also trapped there and as the battle has ramped up in recent days, fears for their safety have only grown.
UN officials announced said they were launching a third effort to evacuate citizens from the plant and the city. But yesterday, the UN did not divulge any new details of the operation; they have been similarly quiet about previous ones while they were ongoing.
“We conducted another stage of a complex operation to evacuate people from Mariupol and Azovstal,” the head of Ukraine’s presidential office, Andriy Yermak, said on Friday on the Telegram messaging app.
“I can say that we managed to take out almost 500 civilians.”
Two previous evacuations by the United Nations and the Red Cross brought roughly 500 people from the steel plant and elsewhere in Mariupol. It was not clear if Mr Yermak was saying more people have since been rescued.
UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres has vowed to continue to “do all we can to get people out of these hellscapes”.
Fighters defending the plant said on Telegram Russian troops fired on an evacuation vehicle that was moving through the territory of the plant.
“This car was moving towards civilians in order to evacuate them from the territory of the plant. As a result of the shelling, one soldier was killed and six wounded,” the message from the Azov Regiment said.
Moscow, which has denied storming the facility, did not immediately acknowledge renewed fighting there on Friday.
People escaping Mariupol typically have to pass through contested areas and many checkpoints – sometimes taking days to reach relative safety in the Ukrainian-controlled city of Zaporizhzhia, about 140 miles to the north west, where many have gathered.
Ahead of Victory Day – which marks the Soviet Union’s triumph over Nazi Germany – municipal workers and volunteers cleaned up what remains of Mariupol, a city that is now under Russia’s control apart from the steel plant. Bulldozers scooped up debris and and people swept streets – with a backdrop of buildings hollowed out by shelling.
Workers repaired a model of a warship, and Russian flags were hoisted on utility poles.
The fall of Mariupol would deprive Ukraine of a vital port, allow 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, the eastern industrial region that the Kremlin says is now its chief objective.