On May 1, the Russian Defense Ministry reported that the evacuation of civilians from the Azovstal plant in the city of Mariupol had begun.
The Ministry reclaimed Russian President Vladimir Putin had initiated the evacuation and Ukrainian troops at the plant were holding civilians hostage:
“Thanks to the initiative of the President of the Russian Federation, VV Putin, 80 civilians, including women and children, held by Ukrainian nationalists have been rescued from the territory of the Azovstal factory in Mariupol.”
Those claims are false.
The evacuation of civilians from the azovstal plant was started by Secretary General of the United Nations Antonio Guterreswhose proposed the plan to Putin at a meeting in Moscow on April 26.
According to the UN, Putin “agreed in principle” to allow the UN and the International Red Cross to participate in the rescue of Ukrainians trapped in Azovstal.
The UN-brokered safe corridors are intended to give evacuees the option of being transported to Ukrainian-controlled territory or Russian-controlled parts of the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine.
Russia does not give the evacuees that option, but sends people to the so-called filtration camps in Donbas to be deported to rural Russia.
Guterres also met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to negotiate the terms of a humanitarian corridor and then traveled to kyiv to finalize the deal with the Ukrainian side, which was already desperate to save people in Azovstal.
So, contrary to what the Russian Defense Ministry claims, the evacuation was not initiated by Putin, but by Guterres.
Just one day after receiving the general secretary in Moscow, the Russian army hit the Ukrainian capital with multiple cruise missile attacks while Guterres was visiting kyiv.
At the same time, the Russian Defense Ministry claimed that “Ukrainian nationalists” in Azovstal were holding civilians against their will. Video broadcast on Russian state television of men and women who claim to be refugees from Azovstal and accuse the Ukrainian forces of keeping them in cages and not letting them out. Those reports do not explain how the alleged hostages escaped or why Ukrainian troops let them go.
The defenders of Azovstal are mostly remnants of the Ukrainian Azov Battalion and the 36th Marine Brigade. The Azov Battalion, in a post on his Telegram channelHe described the civilians in the catacombs as “our wives, children and parents,” saying they chose to stay with the troops to escape possible violence or death at the hands of Russian troops, or deportation to Russia.
They posted photos and videos to back up their statement.
Video from inside the Azovstal plant verified by the Reuters news agency showed servicemen from the Azov battalion helping civilians to the surface through the thick layer of rubble and debris caused by Russian bombardment.
Quoting one of the rescued civilians, Natalia Usmanova, Reuters reported on May 1 that the Russian bombardment was so intense that the people in the Azovstal tunnels were terrified that the bunkers would not withstand it. “We didn’t see the sun for a long time,” Usmanova said, recalling the lack of fresh air, food and water.
Russia besieged Mariupol during the first days of the war in early March, claiming full control of the coastal city a month later, except for the Azovstal plant, which remains the last bastion of the Ukrainian resistance.
Some 2,000 Ukrainian civilians and soldiers reportedly used the Azovstal plant’s vast underground labyrinths to take shelter from Russian bombardment.
Ukrainian authorities estimate that 20,000 Ukrainian civilians and military personnel have been killed in the Mariupol fighting. What appear to be mass burial sites are visible in satellite images released by the Maxar Group at the end of April.
On May 2, the evacuation of civilians through UN-brokered corridors stalled after Russia resumed bombing. Reuters reported. Hundreds of Ukrainian military and civilians are believed to remain trapped at the Azovstal plant.
Reference-www.polygraph.info