The deputy commander of the Azov Regiment of the National Guard, Capt. Svyatoslav Palamar, issued a plea for the safe passage of civilians trapped at a steel plant in Mariupol where the remaining combined Ukrainian forces are withstanding an ongoing Russian assault.
He said overnight on April 3, “naval and barrel artillery…heavy aircraft bombs were dropped” on the premises of the Azovstal plant in the Azov Sea coastal city. “A powerful assault on the plant’s grounds is underway…we call for immediate action to evacuate civilians from the plant’s grounds and transport them safely to Ukrainian-controlled Zaporizhya.”
Two civilian women were killed and 10 more civilians were wounded as a result of the bombardment, Palamar said in a video published on Twitter with English subtitles.
He added: “We will do everything possible to repel this assault.”
Russian tyrant Vladimir Putin, who ordered a renewed invasion of the neighboring country on Feb. 24, claimed the takeover of the strategic port city on April 21 and called off the assault on the steel plant, which never has ceased.
An estimated 1,000 combined force of marines, national guardsmen, border guards, security service and police officers are still defending the sprawling plant whose vast network of underground tunnels offer them shelter and defensive positions.
Donetsk region’s second largest city is nearly decimated and was one of the first to be besieged in the first days of the renewed invasion as part of a war Russia was waged on Ukraine since 2014 when the Crimean Peninsula was seized.
On May 23, more than 100 evacuees over the weekend arrived from Mariupol to Ukrainian-controlled Zaporizhya. Their trek lasted nearly five days after travelling through numerous Russian and Ukrainian military checkpoints and what should’ve been a three-and-a-half-hour drive traversing 276 kilometers.
The fate of 11 of 14 buses that left Mariupol is unknown, according to Euromaidan Press, citing what Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boychenko said on Ukrainian television.
“There are 11 buses ‘lost’ in [Russian] filtration camps, four of them set up in Mariupol,” he said.
The evacuation was brokered by the United Nations with the assistance of the Swiss-based International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
People evacuated from Mariupol’s Azovstal plant arrive on buses at a registration and processing area for internally displaced people in Zaporizhzhia on May 3, 2022. – The UN says 101 civilians have been “successfully evacuated” from Ukraine’s besieged and battered port city of Mariupol in a joint effort with the Red Cross. (Photo by Dimitar DILKOFF / AFP)
“Those trapped in the Azovstal plant have lived through unimaginable horror. We haven’t forgotten those who are still there. We’ll continue working to facilitate safe passage for people,” the ICRC tweeted on May 3.
The same day, the head of the police patrol in Mariupol said his colleague, Danylo Safonov, was killed defending Mariupol on May 2. He had been there since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Feb. 24.
Safonov was killed with two other servicemen after conducting a combat mission and were killed by mortar fire returning to the base, Mykhailo Vershynin, head of the Mariupol police patrol said.
The killed police patrolman was an internally displaced person from Donetsk, which has been occupied by Russian forces since 2014 during the initial invasion.
A situational war map of Ukraine provided by the British Defense Intelligence on May 3.
