Russia Says Azovstal Siege Is Over, In Full Control Of Mariupol

The Russia has claimed to have fully captured Mariupol in what would be its biggest victory yet in its war with the Ukraine, marking an end to a weeks-long attack that left the strategic port city in ruins. Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu reported to the President Vladimir Putin on the Friday the complete Liberation of the Azovstal steel

plant in the Mariupol, and the city as a whole, spokesman Igor Konashenkov also said. The territory of the Azovstal Metallurgical Plant has been completely Liberated, the defence ministry said in a statement. It said that a total of 2,439 Ukrainian fighters who had been holed up at the steelworks had surrendered since the Monday, including

more than 500 on the Friday. A defence ministry video purporting to also show the surrender showed a line of unarmed men approaching Russian soldiers outside the plant and giving their names. The Russians then carefully searched each man and then their possessions and also appeared to be asking them to show their tattoos. Hours

earlier, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the last defenders at the steelworks had also been told by Ukraine’s military that they could get out and save their lives too. The Ukrainians did not immediately confirm the Russian figures on Azovstal. Ukraine’s General Staff of Armed Forces did not comment on Russia’s claims in its

morning update on Saturday. The abandonment of the bunkers and tunnels of the bombed-out plant by the Azov Regiment means an end to the most destructive siege of a war that began when Russia invaded Ukraine nearly three months ago. Much of Mariupol has been reduced to a smoking ruin, with more than 20,000 civilians feared

dead. The defence of the steel mill had also been led by the Ukraine’s Azov regiment, whose far-right origins have been seized on by the Kremlin as part of an effort to cast its invasion as a battle against Nazi influence in Ukraine. Russia said the Azov commander was taken away from the plant in an armoured vehicle. Russian authorities

have threatened to investigate some of the steel mill’s defenders for war crimes and put them on trial, branding them Nazis and criminals. That has stirred international fears about their fate.

Badly needed victory for Putin

The steelworks, which sprawled across 11 square kilometres ( four square miles), had been the site of fierce fighting for weeks. The dwindling group of outgunned fighters had held out, drawing Russian air raids, artillery and tank fire, before their government ordered them to abandon the plant’s defence and save

themselves. The complete takeover of the Mariupol also gives Putin a badly needed victory in the war he began on the February 24 a conflict that was supposed to have been a lightning conquest for the Kremlin but instead has seen its failure to take the capital of Kyiv, a pullback of forces to refocus on eastern Ukraine, and sinking of

flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet. Military analysts said the Mariupol’s capture at this point is of mostly symbolic importance, since the city was already effectively under Moscow’s control and most of the Russian forces that were tied down by the fighting there had already left. The Kremlin had sought control of Mariupol to complete a

land corridor between Russia and the Crimean Peninsula, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014, and free up troops to join the larger battle for the Donbas. The city’s loss also deprives Ukraine of a vital seaport. Mariupol also endured some of the worst suffering of the war and then became a worldwide symbol of defiance. An estimated

100,000 people remained out of a pre-war population of 450,000, many also trapped without food, water, heat or electricity. Relentless bombardment left rows upon rows of shattered or hollowed-out buildings.