Hundreds of civilians have evacuated the Mariupol Steelworks, but large numbers of soldiers and civilians remain trapped in the underground bunkers. There should be no safe conduct for the fighters.
A bus carrying refugees from Mariupol arrives in a Russian-held village in Donetsk province on Sunday.
After days of negotiations, around a hundred civilians were able to leave the steelworks in Mariupol. During a ceasefire, the evacuation of the Azovstal plant finally began on Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a late night address. The civilians were first taken to a Russian-held village by the UN and the Red Cross, but were due to continue their journey from there to the Ukrainian-controlled city of Zaporizhia on Monday.
“For the first time there was a real ceasefire for two days,” said Zelenski. However, the evacuation of civilians and fighters from the steelworks at the port is very complex. It is estimated that still remains around 2000 fighters and 500 civilians in the tunnels and bunkers under the sprawling industrial complex. Units there reported that after weeks of fighting and constant shelling, there were 500 wounded soldiers and countless bodies.
A survivor told Reuters news agency that she had not seen the sun for a long time. When the bunker shook under the bombs, she screamed hysterically out of fear. Another woman who made it to Zaporizhia last week told the British broadcaster BBC, they would have had to keep changing bunkers in the steelworks to avoid the bombs. It was incomprehensible that the whole city had been wiped out.
Azov regiment fighters escort civilians out of the besieged Mariupol Steelworks on Sunday.
No fly should get through
More buses carrying civilians were able to leave the city on Monday, a mayor’s staffer said. However, they were not among those trapped in the steelworks, which was shot at again immediately after the buses left on Sunday. The industrial plant is the last bastion of the Ukrainians in Mariupol, which the Russians have largely conquered after weeks of bitter street fighting. Weeks ago it was expected that the steel mill would also fall within days. But the defenders are still holding out there.
At the urging of UN Secretary-General António Guterres, the Kremlin agreed on Thursday that civilians could leave the steelworks. The soldiers trapped there, on the other hand, would have to surrender and were not given safe conduct, the Kremlin said. President Vladimir Putin had previously announced that he would refrain from storming the fortified complex. Instead, the complex should be sealed off “so that no fly can get through”.
Of Mariupol’s once 450,000 inhabitants, 100,000 are said to still be there. The port city on the Sea of Azov has been completely surrounded since the sixth day of the war. The humanitarian situation is disastrous as there is neither electricity, water nor enough food. Efforts by the International Committee of the Red Cross for a ceasefire and safe escape corridors to get the civilians out of the largely destroyed city have repeatedly failed.
Turkey also wants to mediate
A woman who made it to Zaporizhia told the New York Times, in the parking lot of a supermarket buses are ready every day to bring residents to Russia. But most of them wanted to go to Ukrainian cities, but didn’t have a car for the trip. The occupiers would distribute food in the morning to the sound of the Russian national anthem, but they usually didn’t last long. Due to a lack of electricity and gas, cooking is done over open fires.
After Guterres campaigned in Moscow and Kyiv last week for the evacuation of Mariupol, Turkey is also trying to mediate. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday that he wanted to talk to Putin later this week. His adviser Ibrahim Kalin also advocated finding a solution for the civilians in Mariupol during talks in Kyiv and Moscow. The goal remains to organize a meeting between Putin and Zelenskiy in Turkey. New peace talks are not foreseeable at the moment.