A video has emerged from inside the besieged Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, showing women and children saying they were “exhausted” and urgently needed to be evacuated to Ukrainian-controlled territory.
The film was shot on Thursday. The women say 15 children live in the tunnels under the plant, ranging in age from babies to teenagers. They were trapped along with their families and other civilians, including factory workers.
The video shows several children, one apparently making a homework in a coloring book, surrounded by clothes and makeshift beds. One boy says he desperately wants to see the sunlight again and breathe fresh air outside after weeks of living in a dungeon.
An unnamed woman says she has spent 50 days underground since February 25, the second day of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Others say they found refuge at the plant in early March as Russian forces raided their apartments with artillery and air strikes.
The food and water are almost ready, the woman said, and people are “on the brink of starvation.” “All the provisions we brought with us are running out. Soon we won’t have enough food even for the children. “
She added: “We are here and we need help. We are at the epicenter of events and we cannot go out. My child must be evacuated to a quiet area, as must the others. We ask for safety guarantees for our children. “
The woman continued: “We are worried about the lives of our children and [elderly] parents in need of medical care. Exhaust strength and vitality. There is no day without shelling. They are afraid to even go to the toilet. “
The Ukrainian government is trying to create a humanitarian corridor that will allow civilians in the plant to get out safely. The extensive factory is the base for the Ukrainian Azov Battalion, part of the National Guard, which filmed the video.
Under cover of darkness, Ukrainian forces managed to deliver weapons to the besieged soldiers by helicopter, said Alexei Danilov, secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, adding: “We have a difficult situation, but our army is defending our country.”
About 80 civilians fled Mariupol on Wednesday in four buses. Ukraine says subsequent attempts have failed because Russian troops continue to shell the meeting place. They added that Moscow had forcibly relocated 40,000 people to Russian territory.
On Thursday, Putin declared victory in Mariupol. He said his forces, which control the rest of the city and hoisted a flag on the TV tower, would not seek to enter the plant. Instead, they would seal it so that “not even a fly can escape,” he told Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.
In fact, Moscow has resumed air strikes and is trying to storm the steel plant, Ukrainian presidential adviser Alexei Arestovich said on Saturday. He told national television: “The enemy is trying to stifle the final resistance of the defenders of Mariupol in the Azovstal region.”
Russian forces continue to hide evidence of their crimes by removing bodies from the city’s ruins, Ukrainian authorities said. Satellite images show two new mass graves next to an existing cemetery in the village of Manhush, 15 km west of Mariupol. They estimate that between 3,000 and 9,000 civilians are buried there.
The victims include civilians killed on March 16 when a Russian military plane destroyed the city’s drama theater. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zekensky said the strike killed 300 people. The theater was used as a shelter by about 1,500 women and children.
After failing to take Kyiv, the Kremlin changed its plan for war. The current goal is to “liberate” the eastern Donbass. On Friday, a Russian general said the second goal was to create a land corridor connecting the separatist so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics with Crimea and the breakaway Transnistrian republic of Moldova.
In its latest intelligence update, the UK Ministry of Defense said that Russian tactical battalions, which had been gathering in and around Donbass, had not “achieved great success in the last 24 hours”. “Ukraine’s counterattacks continue to hamper efforts,” the statement said.
Further north, the Ukrainian army regained part of its territory. She liberated three villages around the city of Kharkiv, according to District Governor Oleg Sinehubov. Troops have secured positions in the villages of Bezruki, Slatine and Prudyanka, he said.
The General Staff of Ukraine said it had repulsed eight Russian attacks, destroying nine tanks, 18 armored units and 13 vehicles, a tanker and three artillery systems. “The honors of the Russian occupiers are regrouping. The enemy continues to launch missile and bomb strikes on military and civilian infrastructure, the statement said.
Luhansk Governor Sergei Haidai said two people were killed in a Russian shelling in the town of Popasna on Saturday. He said an evacuation train was expected for residents of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of the eastern city of Pokrovsk, heading for the western city of Chop, near Ukraine’s border with Slovakia and Hungary.
“In addition to the fact that the street fights in the city have been going on for several weeks, the Russian army is constantly shelling high-rise apartment buildings and private houses,” Haidai wrote on Instagram.
“Only yesterday, locals withstood five enemy artillery attacks. Not everyone survived. “
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