Ongoing battle for port city
Separatists install “mayors” in Mariupol
4/8/2022 3:22 am
The Ukrainian army is still resisting the Russian capture of Mariupol. Fighting alongside the Kremlin are pro-Russian separatists who are now appointing a “mayor”. This claims that not tens of thousands but only 5000 civilians died in the city.
According to the Mariupol city administration, which was deployed by pro-Russian forces, around 5,000 civilians have been killed in the fighting in the Ukrainian port city. The “new mayor” Konstantin Ivashchenko told the state news agency TASS, according to excerpts of an interview published in advance on Thursday, that “60 to 70 percent” of all apartments in the city had been destroyed or damaged.
Ivashchenko also estimated that 250,000 people had left the city, but at least as many, if not as many as 300,000, were still in the city. Ukraine, on the other hand, estimates that there are still 100,000 people in the city, where the humanitarian situation is catastrophic. The Ukrainian authorities had also estimated the number of civilian casualties at “tens of thousands” and the destruction at “90 percent”.
Ivashchenko, on the other hand, said that one of the “best preserved” schools could resume classes “this month”. “We’re going to turn on the generator for a while” to provide the power, he said. However, the administration “will not be able to provide water”. He added: “We won’t be able to feed the children, but we will have maybe two to three classes a day.”
Separatists want to “clean” tunnels
Russia is using pro-Russian separatists from eastern Ukraine and the feared troops of Chechen ruler Ramzan Kadyrov in the fighting. According to the separatists, fighting is concentrated on a large Azovstal steelworks and on the port.
“It’s a city within a city,” said the commander of the Donetsk separatist forces, Eduard Bassurin, describing the industrial zone. “There are several Soviet-era underground levels that you can’t bomb from above, you have to clear underground.” That will “take some time,” Bassurin told Russian broadcaster Perwy Kanal.
According to him, “3,000 to 3,500” Ukrainian soldiers are fighting there, as well as an unspecified number of civilians who have taken up arms. His troops blocked the exits to the tunnel system and waited for the enemy to surrender. In addition, there are also pockets of resistance in the center of the city.
The Russian army has been besieging Mariupol for weeks and is facing fierce Ukrainian resistance. According to both sides, the humanitarian situation there is catastrophic and the city is largely in ruins. The capture is strategic for Russia as it would establish a land link between the Crimean Peninsula, annexed in 2014, and the separatist-controlled region in eastern Ukraine.