Heavy fighting was still going on in Mariupol on Monday, according to Petro Andriushchenko, an adviser to the city’s mayor.
He said Russian forces had started issuing passports for movement within the city and had announced entry and exit routes would be closed on Monday, warning that the men remaining in the city would be “filtered out”.
That claim could not be independently verified, but Andriushchenko and other Ukrainian officials said Russian forces bombed the Azovstal plant, one of the last bastions of the city still under Ukrainian control. The Russian military claims to have blocked Ukrainian forces there.
Myhailo Vershynin, head of the Mariupol Patrol Police, told CNN the defenders inside are “ready for fierce resistance.”
“They are aware of their fate, but no one is going to give up. Yesterday[the Russians]offered us a ‘corridor’, they wanted us to go unarmed, go through the filter points and then surrender,” he told CNN in voice and text messages.
“Nobody agreed to that. No one will leave without a gun,” he added.
‘Hell of Earth’
Azovstal Iron and Steel Works is a sprawling industrial complex in the south-east corner of Mariupol. The site covers an area of more than four square miles and formerly employed more than 10,000 people. How many Ukrainian troops are still in the plant is unclear.
Vershynin said an estimated 1,000 civilians, including women, children and the elderly, took shelter at the facility.
“They built their lives there, provided themselves with food and water,” he said. “These people didn’t and don’t want to get out. … They knew they had more chance of staying alive here.”
The commander of the Azov regiment, one of the units defending the city, said Russian forces fired on the compound “voluntarily” as hundreds of people took shelter inside.
“Russian occupying forces and their proxies from Luhansk People’s Republic/Donetsk People’s Republic are aware of civilians and willingly shell the Marine plant for indiscriminate attacks,” Lieutenant Colonel Denys Prokopenko told Telegram.
The commander of Ukraine’s naval unit in the city said Mariupol was “what hell on earth looks like”.
“In the [Azovstal] Factory, women with children and babies live in bunkers. In hunger and cold. Attacked by enemy aviation every day. The wounded die every day because there is no medicine, no water and no food,” said Maj. Serhii Volyna, commander of the 36th Separate Marine Brigade, in an open letter to Pope Francis published on the Ukrainska Pravda website on Monday became.
“The time has come when prayer is no longer enough,” he added. The Pope denounced the war and called for peace in his Easter blessing on Sunday.
Retired Lt. Gen. and CNN military analyst Mark Hertling said Mariupol is a key logistics hub. Its strategic location on the Azov Sea coast makes it an important destination. The capture would allow Russia to create a continuous land bridge from Donbass to Crimea, the peninsula it illegally annexed in 2014.
“Not only does it have roads, it also has railroads and ports,” Hertling said. “There are roads that go in all directions, this road to the east leads to Rostov-on-Don within Russia, the roads to the north and north-east lead to Luhansk and Donetsk, the roads to the north-west lead to Zaporizhia, and the roads to Russia south take you down to the port city of Berdyansk.
“This next phase of the war will be a battle over logistics. So, Mariupol is an extremely important city in the eastern region, which they all fought against. Both sides have been struggling over how to control the roads, the other to avoid controlling the road when heading north.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the situation in Mariupol “inhumane” and said Russia was “trying to destroy everyone who is in Mariupol”.
Speaking to CNN last week, he said no one knew how many civilians had died in Mariupol. “Several thousand, tens of thousands were forced to evacuate towards the Russian Federation and we don’t know where they are, they didn’t leave any documentary trail,” Zelenskyy said.
While fighting continued in Mariupol, it has also intensified in other parts of the country. Ukrainian officials in the Kharkiv and Luhansk regions on Monday reported heavy bombing by Russian forces, conceding a retreat from a key city but claiming to have successfully repelled Russian attacks elsewhere.
Meanwhile, the western city of Lviv, which is considered a safe haven due to its proximity to the border, was also attacked on Monday. Maksym Kozytskyy, the Lviv regional military governor, said three rocket attacks hit military camps not used by the armed forces and a fourth hit a tire workshop. Seven people died, he said.
Strategic city, almost gone
Mariupol has become a symbol of the appalling brutality of Russia’s unprovoked attack on Ukraine. But it is also a symbol of Ukrainians’ fierce resistance against a much more powerful enemy.
It was never a particularly picturesque city, with a skyline dominated by steel mills, chemical plants and a shipyard port. But it has improved a lot in recent years. Money flowed in and the quality of life improved. The parks have been redesigned and small niches have been transformed into cool urban meeting places.
With the improvements, the residents felt a sense of pride. The city prospered. Just weeks before Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion, people in Mariupol were nervous, but they didn’t believe—or perhaps didn’t want to—that their hometown was in real danger.
Now everything is gone.
The vast majority of the southern city was either destroyed or badly damaged. Photos and drone recordings show that hardly a street has remained untouched by the war. The relentless bombardment has made it habitable.
Many of its landmarks have disappeared, like the famous Drama Theater which was destroyed by Russian bombs last month. The streets, where small cafes and trendy restaurants began to appear, are covered with rubble and dust.
An estimated 100,000 people remain in Mariupol and its immediate vicinity. You have no way out.
CNN’s Olga Voitovych, Tim Lister, Mike Pratt, Yulia Kesaieva, and Nathan Hodge contributed to this report.