The strategic port of Mariupol, which Moscow has allegedly “liberated”, is still defying Russian forces, sources in Kyiv say, after which Ukrainian militants continue to fiercely defend Azovstal’s vast metallurgical complex, where civilians are also holed up. “There is not a single undamaged building in Mariupol. A city was literally on fire,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a speech to the Portuguese parliament on Thursday.
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“For more than a month, Russian troops besieged Mariupol (…) Hundreds of thousands of civilians were stuck there, without food, without water, without medicine. Under constant fire,” he said. The complete fall of Mariupol, a major industrial port on the Sea of Azov that has become a martyr city and a field of ruins after almost two months of Russian bombing and siege, would be a major victory for Moscow, which aims to create a land bridge linking Crimea, which it annexed in 2014 with pro-Russian separatist areas in the Donbass region.
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On Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russian forces had “liberated” Mariupol and ordered the remaining Ukrainian fighters to besiege rather than storm the Azovstal industrial compound where they are holed up. Volodymyr Zelensky did not declare defeat and assured that the fight was still ongoing. “You can only delay the inevitable – the moment when the invaders have to leave our territory, especially Mariupol, a city that opposes Russia, despite what the occupiers say,” he said in a video address.