Mariupol was on the verge of falling to Russia in a major victory for the Kremlin on Wednesday night after around 1,000 Ukrainian marines reportedly surrendered and Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed it had taken control of the city’s port.
Footage aired on Russian state television reportedly showed Ukrainian troops surrendering after holding out in the besieged port city since war broke out on February 24.
Soldiers emerging from a bunker at a steel mill were filmed walking with their hands raised while a man was seen helping to carry a comrade on a stretcher and waving a white cloth.
Russia said 1,026 Ukrainian marines hiding at the Ilyich Iron and Steel Plant in the city’s industrial zone were forced to surrender, including 162 officers, after putting up a last-ditch stand. Kyiv dismissed the lawsuit.
Unconfirmed submissions from the Kremlin Defense Ministry added that members of Ukraine’s 36th Naval Brigade “voluntarily laid down arms.” Russia’s defense ministry also claimed last night it had taken control of the port of Mariupol.
Pictured: Video appears to show Ukrainian marines surrendering in the eastern city of Mariupol. Russia claimed 1,026 Ukrainian marines hiding at the Ilyich Iron and Steel Works in the city’s industrial zone were forced to surrender, including 162 officers
The city was surrounded for the vast majority of the seven-week invasion and large areas were reduced to rubble, with images from the city reminiscent of those seen in Allepo, Syria, and Grozny, Chechnya – also destroyed by Russian forces.
Moscow faces claims it committed war crimes after shelling a maternity hospital and bombing a theater housing families, killing hundreds. The true toll is not yet known.
The city’s mayor said a total of about 21,000 civilians were killed in the fighting and the seemingly indiscriminate shelling of the city.
However, the Ukrainian resistance, including men who remained in the fight after their families fled, had managed to maintain control of the city and try to protect the estimated 100,000 civilians left behind.
Yesterday, as Russian troops approached and were accused of attacking anyone trying to leave, a Ukrainian MP compared the situation to the Holocaust.
Petro Andriuschenko, an adviser to the mayor, said Ukraine still owns several areas of the city, including a separate steel plant in Azovstal – one of the largest in Europe – and the port.
Capture of the Azovstal industrial zone, where the Marines are hiding, would give the Russians full control of Ukraine’s main Azov Sea port, strengthen a southern land corridor and expand occupation of the country’s east.
Ukraine’s General Staff said Russian troops would attack Azovstal and the port, but a Defense Ministry spokesman said he had no information about a surrender.
“Russian forces are stepping up activities on the southern and eastern fronts and trying to avenge their defeats,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a video address on Wednesday evening.
The city’s mayor, Vadym Boychenko, insisted the city was yet to fall, but acknowledged that the remaining troops were “numerously outnumbered”.
“When they say they are made of steel, we should know that even steel has its breaking point, but they persevere and the city of Mariupol remains a Ukrainian city,” he said.
Boychenko said Russia used mobile crematoria “to get rid of evidence of war crimes” — a statement that could not be verified.
Moscow has blamed Ukraine for the deaths of civilians and accused Kyiv of denigrating Russian forces.
A squad of Russian soldiers loads a long belt of cannon shells into one of their armored vehicles on April 12, 2022
A service member of pro-Russian troops loads a missile into an infantry fighting vehicle during fighting in the Ukraine-Russia conflict near a plant of the Azovstal Iron and Steel Works Company in the southern port city of Mariupol, Ukraine April 12, 2022
Earlier this week, the 36th Marine Brigade said it was preparing for a final battle at Mariupol that would likely end in death or capture.
Last night there were claims that remaining marines had joined the ultra-nationalist Azov Brigade after a “complex and very risky” escape operation.
Regardless, military experts said the fall of Mariupol was a matter of “hours, not days.”
Zelensky, in an open address yesterday, did not acknowledge claims about the capitulation in Mariupol.
Instead, he released a video in English urging the West to send more “heavy weapons” to prevent an “endless bloodbath.”
Denysenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s Interior Minister, denied claims of a surrender in comments to Current Time TV, saying they had never heard anything like it and the battle over the seaport was still ongoing.
“According to official data from the (Ukrainian) Ministry of Defense and the General Staff, we have not heard anything like this,” Denysenko said. “Furthermore, I will say… that the battle for the seaport continues to this day.”
Yesterday, Ukrainian MP Dmytro Gurin said it was “almost impossible” for the remaining civilians in the city to survive with scarce food and water, amid claims that Russian troops were targeting escape attempts.
He added that the situation resembles the scenes at Auschwitz during World War II and is worse than the Srebrenica massacre of more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslims during the Bosnian War.
Before the war, 400 thousand people lived in Mariupol. His capture would be Russia’s greatest success so far during the invasion.
It would give its forces full control of the Azov Sea coast and a secure land bridge connecting mainland Russia and pro-Russian separatist areas to the east with the Crimean Peninsula, which was captured from Moscow in 2014.
This would allow Russian forces to unite and join a larger offensive against Ukrainian forces to the east.
Ukrainian fighters set up a last-ditch stand in tunnels beneath an abandoned Azovstal Steelworks (pictured) in Mariupol as Russian forces approached the besieged port city
Experts say the fall of Mariupol, seen as strategically important to Russia’s plans to attack eastern Ukraine, is inevitable. But the bases in their underground bases near the steelworks (pictured) hope to make it as difficult as possible for the attackers to capture the port on the Sea of Azov
The Kremlin’s nearly seven-week invasion, the largest attack on a European state since 1945, has not gone according to plan.
Russia has been forced to pull out of some northern areas, even as attacks across the country have reduced Ukrainian cities to rubble and more than 4.6 million people have fled abroad.
The Kremlin condemned President Joe Biden’s description of Moscow’s actions in Ukraine as genocide, with spokesman Dmitry Peskov saying it was unacceptable when it came from the leader of a country he said had committed crimes of his own. The White House announced that it would initiate legal proceedings.
The United States on Wednesday announced an additional $800 million in military aid, including artillery systems, armored personnel carriers and helicopters. This brought total US military aid to more than $2.5 billion. France and Germany also agreed more.
Russia will consider US and NATO vehicles transporting weapons on Ukrainian territory as legitimate military targets, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told the TASS news agency.
A first report by an expert mission from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe documents a “catalog of inhumanity” by Russian troops in Ukraine, according to the US ambassador to the OSCE.
“This includes evidence of direct attacks on civilians, attacks on medical facilities, rape, executions, looting and forced deportations of civilians to Russia,” said Michael Carpenter.
Russian soldiers (pictured) on Tuesday secured the Mariupol Drama Theater, which was destroyed in a missile attack on March 16
At least 300 people died when the Mariupol Drama Theater (pictured, Russian soldiers secure the destroyed building) was the target of a Russian missile attack, despite being labeled as “Children”.
Russia has denied attacking civilians, saying Ukrainian and Western war crimes allegations are fabricated.
The Kyiv district police chief said 720 bodies had been found in the region around the capital, from which Russian forces had withdrawn, and more than 200 people were missing.
International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan, after visiting Bucha, a city where bound bodies apparently shot at close range were found, said Ukraine was a “crime scene” and that it fell under the jurisdiction of the ICC.
“We must penetrate the fog of war to find out the truth,” Khan said on Twitter.
The mayor of the northeastern city of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, said bombing increased significantly on Wednesday and satellite photos from Maxar Technologies showed long columns of armored vehicles in the area.
At least seven people, including a two-year-old boy, have been killed and 22 injured in Kharkiv in the past 24 hours. Ukrainian forces shot down two Russian planes that were attacking towns in the region, regional governor Oleh Synehubov said earlier.
Reuters could not immediately verify his statement, but filmed people in Kharkiv quietly carrying bodies out of a shell-hit block of flats.