The Battle of Azovstal ends. This sprawling 11 square kilometer industrial complex was the last Ukrainian bastion of the city of Mariupol, 90% destroyed and which the Russians want to conquer to establish territorial continuity between Donbass and Crimea, annexed in 2014. For weeks, a thousand soldiers resisted within its walls, a maze of underground galleries dating back to Soviet times. Surrounded, bombarded day and night, they held out in unimaginable conditions. Nearly 700 were injured.
The Ukrainian authorities had been negotiating for several weeks to find an agreement to save them. It is now in progress. Monday, May 16, they announced the end of the combat operation of the soldiers entrenched in the factory and the evacuation of 264 of them, including several dozen wounded. “On May 16, 53 seriously injured were evacuated from Azovstal to Novoazovsk for medical assistance and 211 others were transported to Olenivka through a humanitarian corridor”, announced Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Ganna Malyar. These two localities are located on the territory controlled by Russian and pro-Russian forces in eastern Ukraine, but Mme Malyar clarified that the fighters should be repatriated in the future to territory controlled by Ukraine, “as part of an exchange procedure” with Russian prisoners. The Russian media RT showed a video of a dozen buses leaving the factory.
The Ukrainian General Staff confirmed the evacuation and explained that “rescue activities of the defenders who remain in the territory of Azovstal continue”without specifying how many soldiers remained on the spot. “The defenders of Mariupol are heroes of our time. They are forever in history”, he added. According to him, their fierce struggle has notably “prevented the implementation of a plan [russe] for the quick capture of Zaporizhia”a major Ukrainian city and administrative center located more than 200 kilometers to the west.
Apparent Russian victory
President Volodymyr Zelensky also praised the defenders of Azovstal and justified the evacuation operation on the territory controlled by Moscow. “We hope to save the lives of our boys. I want to emphasize this: Ukraine needs its living heroes. This is our principle. I think everyone will understand. » This apparent Russian victory in Azovstal comes two weeks after the evacuation of civilians who had sheltered in the factory since the start of the Russian offensive on February 24 – mostly relatives of factory workers. They had been evacuated at the beginning of May during a difficult humanitarian operation, carried out jointly by the UN and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Will Russia keep its word to allow the return of Azovstal soldiers to territory controlled by Ukraine? In the eyes of Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Azov regiment, an ultranationalist battalion integrated into the regular army in 2014 after the start of the war in Donbass, is the embodiment of the “Nazism” from which he says he wants to liberate the country.
You have 69.84% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.