Russia’s claim about Mariupol capture fuels concern for POWs


POKROVSK, Ukraine — (AP) — Russia’s alleged seizure of a Mariupol steel plant that became a symbol of Ukrainian tenacity gives Russian President Vladimir Putin a much-sought victory in the war he started, capping a nearly three-month-long siege that left a city in ruins and more than 20,000 residents feared dead.

After the Russian Defense Ministry announced Friday night that its forces had withdrawn the last Ukrainian fighters from the plant’s miles of underground tunnels, concern grew for Ukrainian defenders who are now prisoners in Russian hands.

Denis Pushilin, head of an area of ​​eastern Ukraine controlled by Moscow-backed separatists, said on Saturday that Ukrainians, considered heroes by their fellow citizens, were He will surely face a court. for their actions in wartime.

“I think a tribunal is unavoidable here. I believe that justice must be restored. There is a request for this from ordinary people, society and probably the sane part of the world community,” Russian state news agency Tass quoted Pushilin as saying.

Russian officials and state media have repeatedly tried to characterize the fighters who took refuge in the Azovstal steel plant as neo-Nazis. among the plants more than 2,400 defenders they were members of the Azov Regiment, a national guard unit with roots in the far right.

The Ukrainian government has not commented on Russia’s claim to capture Azovstal, which for weeks remained the last stronghold of the Ukrainian resistance in Mariupol, and thereby complete Moscow’s long-sought goal of controlling the cityhome to a strategic seaport.

The Ukrainian military told refugee fighters at the plant this week, hundreds of them wounded, that their the mission was complete and they were able to get out. He described extracting him as an evacuation, not a mass surrender.

The end of the battle for Mariupol would help Putin offset some painful setbacks, including the failure of Russian troops to take control of the Ukrainian capital kyiv, the sinking of the Russian Navy flagship in the Black Sea and the continuing resistance that has stalled an offensive in eastern Ukraine.

The impact of Russia’s declared victory in the broader war in Ukraine remained unclear. Many Russian troops had already been redeployed from Mariupol to other parts of the conflict, which began when Russia invaded its neighbor on February 24.

Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov reported on Saturday that Russia had destroyed a Ukrainian special operations base in the Black Sea region of Odessa, as well as a major cache of Western-supplied weapons in the Zhytomyr region. , in the north of Ukraine. There was no confirmation from Ukraine.

In its morning operational report, the Ukrainian military general staff reported heavy fighting in much of eastern Ukraine, including the Sievierodonetsk, Bakhmut and Avdiivka areas.

After failing to capture kyiv, Russia focused its offensive on the country’s eastern industrial heartland. Russian-backed separatists have controlled parts of the Donbas region since 2014, and Moscow wants to expand the territory under its control.

The Mariupol seizure furthers Russia’s quest to essentially create a land bridge from Russia stretching through the Donbas region to the Crimean peninsula, which Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said on Saturday that Russia was working to restore the port and remove the mines.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy again demanded that Russia pay “one way or another for everything it has destroyed in Ukraine. Every house burned. Every school ruined, hospital ruined. Each flown house of culture and infrastructure installation. Every business destroyed.

“Of course, the Russian state will not even acknowledge that it is an aggressor,” he said in a speech Friday night. “But your acknowledgment is not required.”

Zelenskyy expressed his gratitude to his American counterpart, Joe Biden, who said goodbye on Saturday to a new, $40 billion aid infusion for the war-torn nation. Half of the funds provide military assistance.

Mariupol, which is part of Donbas, was blockaded early in the war and became a terrifying example to people in other parts of the country of the starvation, terror and death they could face if the Russians surrounded their communities.

As the end drew near at the steel plant, fighters wives who had endured talked about what they feared would be their last contact with their husbands.

Olga Boiko, the wife of a Marine, wiped away tears as she shared the words her husband wrote 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.”

The seaside steel mill, which occupies some 11 square kilometers (4 square miles), had been a battleground for weeks. Drawing Russian airstrikes, artillery and tank fire, the dwindling group of outgunned fighters held out with the help of airdrops before their government ordered them to leave the plant.

Zelenskyy revealed in an interview published Friday that Ukrainian helicopter pilots braved Russian anti-aircraft fire to transport medicine, food and water to the steelworks, as well as recover bodies and rescue wounded fighters.

A “very large” number of pilots died on their daring missions, he said. “These are absolutely heroic people, who knew it would be difficult, they knew that flying would be almost impossible,” Zelenskyy said.

Russia claimed that the commander of the Azov Regiment was taken from the plant in an armored vehicle due to local residents’ alleged hatred of him, but no evidence of Ukrainian antipathy towards the nationalist regiment has emerged.

The Kremlin has seized on the regiment’s far-right origins in its campaign to portray the invasion as a battle against Nazi influence in Ukraine. Russian authorities have threatened to put some of the steelmaker’s defenders on trial for alleged war crimes.

With Russia in control of the city, Ukrainian authorities are likely to face delays in documenting evidence of alleged Russian atrocities in Mariupol, including the bombings of a maternity hospital and a theater where hundreds of civilians had taken refuge.

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.

At one point during the siege, Pope Francis lamented that Mariupol had become a “city of martyrs.”

It is estimated that 100,000 of the 450,000 people who resided there before the war remain. Many, trapped by the Russian siege, were left without food, water and electricity.

The chief executive of Metinvest, a multinational company that owns the Azovstal plant and another steelmaker, Ilyich, in Mariupol, spoke of the city’s devastation in an interview published Saturday in the Italian daily Corriere della Sera.

“The Russians are trying to clean (the city) to hide their crimes,” Metinvest CEO Yuriy Ryzhenkov was quoted as saying by the paper. “The residents are trying to make the city work, to make the water supplies work again.”

“But the sewage system is damaged, there have been floods and there are fears of contagion” from drinking the water, he said.

The Ilyich steel plant still has an intact infrastructure, but if the Russians try to put it into operation, the Ukrainians will refuse to return to their jobs there, Ryzhenkov said.

“We will never work under Russian occupation,” he said.

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McQuillan reported from Lviv. Stashevskyi reported from kyiv. Associated Press writers Yuras Karmanau in Lviv, Andrea Rosa in Kharkiv, Frances D’Emilio in Rome and other AP staffers around the world contributed.

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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine




Reference-www.boston25news.com

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