Families in contact with the soldiers inside the factory report harsh conditions with a lack of medicine, water and food.
With dwindling ammunition and food, and dire living conditions, the last Ukrainian fighters entrenched in the Azovstal factory are still struggling as the Russian military tightens its grip on this last pocket of resistance in Mariupol, in the South-East.
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Details of life inside and the ongoing fighting were given by Yevgenia Tytarenko, a military nurse, whose husband, a member of the Azov regiment, and his colleagues are still at the factory. “Many soldiers are in serious condition. They are injured and have no medicine“, explains Yevguenia, who was able to maintain contact with her relatives inside. “Food and water are also lacking“, she says. “I will fight until the end“, wrote her husband, Mykhaïlo, in an SMS that AFP was able to consult.
Bodies rot for lack of refrigeration systems
For several weeks, Mariupol has been almost entirely under Russian control. Only the immense Azovstal steelworks escaped him, which the Russian army relentlessly pounded, in addition to major attacks on the ground at the origin of violent combats. “The fighters have already said goodbye to their wives. One told his wife: ‘Don’t cry, we’ll come home no matter what: alive or dead’“says Yevguenia, 34 years old. According to her, the possibility of seeing them evacuated is very slim.
The nurse describes a chaotic situation inside the tunnels of the factory, soldiers fighting while moving civilians and corpses through the maze of underground galleries dating from Soviet times.
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Despite the horror at the Azovstal site, some find it unbearable to be outside. Rolana Bondarenko, a 54-year-old woman, has a dozen friends among the members of the Azov regiment still present. With her son, she was one of the first to join the battalion in 2014. Since then, Rolana has learned that her boy had been killed in mid-April. “They put him in a black bag and his body rots“, she told AFP by telephone from Germany, where she has been living for a year for medical reasons. “And it’s not just him who is in his case. There are hundreds!“.
But even after the loss of her son, Rolana continues to ardently support the remaining Ukrainian fighters who face the firepower of Russian artillery and aircraft, in what feels like a last stand. Every day, she sends text messages embellished with emoticons to boost the morale of the troops, who, for their part, try to spare her by evoking their pride and their resilience more than their suffering.
Some have lostbetween 15 to 20 kg“, while food is sorely lacking, alert Rolana. “I would like to be by their side right now“, she adds between two sobs. “If I died there, it would be with my family“.
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