POKROVSK, Ukraine — In what would be its biggest victory yet in the war with Ukraine, Russia claimed to have captured Mariupol after a nearly three-month siege that reduced much of the strategic port city to smoldering ruins, with more than 20,000 feared civilians. dead.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has informed President Vladimir Putin of the “complete liberation” of the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, the last stronghold of the Ukrainian resistance, and of the city as a whole, spokesman Igor said on Friday. Konashenkov.
There was no immediate confirmation from Ukraine.
Russian state news agency RIA Novosti quoted the ministry as saying that a total of 2,439 Ukrainian fighters who had taken refuge in the steel mill had surrendered since Monday, including more than 500 on Friday.
When they surrendered, the Russians took the troops prisoner, with at least some taken to a former penal colony. Others were said to be hospitalized.
Defending the steel mill was led by Ukraine’s Azov Regiment, whose far-right origins have been exploited by the Kremlin as part of an effort to portray its invasion as a battle against Nazi influence in Ukraine. Russia said the Azov commander was taken from the plant in an armored vehicle.
Russian authorities have threatened to investigate some of the steelmaker’s defenders for war crimes and put them on trial, calling them “Nazis” and criminals. That has sparked international fears about his fate.
The steel mill, which stretched across 11 square kilometers (4 square miles), had been the scene of fierce fighting for weeks. The dwindling group of outgunned fighters had held out, drawing Russian airstrikes, artillery and tank fire, before their government ordered them to abandon the defense of the plant and save themselves.
The complete seizure of Mariupol gives Putin a much-needed victory in the war that began on February 24, a conflict that was supposed to have been a lightning conquest for the Kremlin but instead failed to take the capital of kyiv. a retreat. of forces to refocus on eastern Ukraine, and the sinking of the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet.
Military analysts said the capture of Mariupol at this point is of mostly symbolic importance, as the city was already effectively under Moscow’s control and most of the Russian forces that were trapped by the fighting there had already left.
In other developments on Friday, the West moved to pour billions more in aid into Ukraine, with fighting raging in Donbas, the industrial heartland in eastern Ukraine that Putin is hell-bent on capturing.
Russian forces shelled a vital road and kept up attacks on a key town in the Luhansk region, targeting a school among other sites, Ukrainian authorities said. Luhansk is part of the Donbas.
The Kremlin had sought control of Mariupol to complete a land corridor between Russia and the Crimean Peninsula, which Ukraine seized in 2014, and free up troops to join the larger battle for Donbas. The loss of the city also deprives Ukraine of a vital seaport.
Mariupol endured some of the worst suffering of the war and became a global symbol of defiance. An estimated 100,000 people remained out of a pre-war population of 450,000, many trapped without food, water, heat or electricity. The relentless bombardment left row upon row of buildings smashed or emptied.
A maternity hospital was attacked in a deadly Russian airstrike on March 9, producing searing images of pregnant women being evacuated. A week later, around 300 people were reported killed in a bombing of a theater where civilians were sheltering, although the real death toll could be closer to 600.
Satellite images from April showed what appeared to be mass graves on the outskirts of Mariupol, where local officials accused Russia of covering up the massacre by burying up to 9,000 civilians.
Earlier this month, hundreds of civilians were evacuated from the plant during humanitarian ceasefires and spoke of the terror of the relentless bombardment, the humid conditions underground and the fear that they would not make it out alive.
As the end in Azovstal drew near, wives of fighters who held out at the steel mill recounted what they feared would be their last contact with their husbands.
Olga Boiko, the wife of a sailor, wiped away tears as she said her husband had written to her on Thursday: “Hello. We gave up, I don’t know when and if I will get back to you. Love you. Kiss you. Goodbye.”
Natalia Zaritskaya, the wife of another fighter in Azovstal, said that according to the messages she had seen in the last two days, “now they are on the road from hell to hell. Every inch of this road is deadly.”
She said that two days ago, her husband reported that of the 32 soldiers he had served with, only eight survived, most seriously injured.
While Russia described the departure of troops from the steel plant as a mass surrender, the Ukrainians called it a mission accomplished. They said the fighters had tied down Moscow forces and hampered their attempt to seize the east.
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, described the defense of Mariupol as “the Thermopylae of the 21st century,” a reference to one of the most glorious defeats in history, in which 300 Spartans held off a long Persian force. major in 480 a. before finally succumbing.
In other Friday news:
— Zelenskyy said Russia should pay for every home, school, hospital and business it destroys. He called on Ukraine’s partners to seize Russian funds and properties under his jurisdiction and use them to create a fund to compensate those who suffered.
Russia “would feel the true weight of every missile, every bomb, every shell that was fired at us,” he said in his late-night video address.
— The Group of Seven major world economies and financial institutions agreed to provide more money to bolster Ukraine’s finances, bringing the total to $19.8 billion. In the US, President Joe Biden was expected to sign a $40 billion military and economic aid package for Ukraine and its allies.
– Russia will cut off natural gas to Finland on Saturday, the Finnish state energy company said, just days after Finland applied to join NATO. Finland had rejected Moscow’s demand to pay for gas in rubles. The cut is not expected to have a major immediate effect. Natural gas accounted for just 6% of Finland’s total energy consumption in 2020, Finnish broadcaster YLE said.
— A captured Russian soldier accused of killing a civilian awaited his fate in Ukraine’s first war crimes trial. Sergeant Vadim Shishimarin, 21, could receive life in prison.
— Russian lawmakers have proposed a bill to lift the 40-year age limit for Russians who volunteer for military service. Currently, all Russian men between the ages of 18 and 27 must complete a year of service, although many get deferments to university and other exemptions.
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McQuillan reported from Lviv. Stashevskyi reported from kyiv. Associated Press writers Yuras Karmanau in Lviv, Andrea Rosa in Kharkiv, Jamey Keaten in Geneva, and other AP staffers around the world contributed.
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Reference-abcnews.go.com