The Russian army and pro-Russian forces launched an offensive against the Azovstal plant, the last stronghold of Ukrainian resistance in the city of Mariupol, from which civilians have been evacuated in recent days thanks to a ceasefire.
“Units of the Russian Army and the Donetsk People’s Republicusing artillery and aircraft, began to destroy” the “firing positions” of the Ukrainian fighters who left the plant, the Defense Ministry said, quoted by Russian agencies.
The spokesman for the Russian armed forces stated that the ukrainian battalion Azov, which defends the plant, “used” the declared ceasefire to evacuate civilians to get out of the basement of the steelworks and “take firing positions on the territory and in the factory buildings.”
“We were shelled all night … two women were killed and now there is an assault on Azovstal,” Sviatoslav Palamar, deputy commander of the Azov battalion, told the Ukraïnska Pravda news website.
The official asked the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskymake “forceful decisions because the situation is very difficult”.
Some 100 civilians were evacuated over the weekend from the massive Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol, a port city in the southern Donbas region that is largely under Russian control.