Pokrovsk(Ukraine)- Russia claimed to have captured Mariupol after a nearly three-month siege that reduced much of the strategic port city to a smoking ruin, with over 20,000 civilians feared dead, in what would be its most significant victory yet in the war with Ukraine.
According to spokesman Igor Konashenkov, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu reported to President Vladimir Putin the “complete liberation” of the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, the last stronghold of Ukrainian resistance, and the city as a whole.
There was no immediate confirmation from Ukraine.
Russia’s state news agency RIA Novosti quoted the ministry as saying 2,439 Ukrainian fighters who had been holed up at the steelworks had surrendered since Monday, including over 500 on Friday.
As they surrendered, the Russians took the troops prisoner, and at least some were taken to a former penal colony. Others were said to be hospitalized.
Ukraine’s Azov Regiment defended the steel mill. The Kremlin exploited their far-right origins as part of an effort to portray the invasion as a fight against Nazi influence in Ukraine. The Azov commander was removed from the plant in an armoured vehicle, according to Russia.
Russian authorities have threatened to investigate some of the steel mill’s defenders for war crimes and put them on trial, branding them “Nazis” and criminals. That has stirred international fears about their fate.
The steelworks, which sprawled across 11 square kilometres (4 square miles), had been the site of fierce fighting for weeks. The dwindling group of outgunned fighters had held out, drawing Russian airstrikes, artillery and tank fire, before their government ordered them to abandon the plant’s defence and save themselves.
The complete takeover of Mariupol gives Putin a badly needed victory in the war he began on February 24. This conflict was supposed to have been a lightning conquest for the Kremlin but instead has seen the failure to take the capital of Kyiv, a pullback of forces to refocus on eastern Ukraine, and the sinking of the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet.
Military analysts said Mariupol’s capture is primarily symbolic since the city was already effectively under Moscow’s control. Most of the Russian forces tied down by the fighting had already left.
In other developments Friday, the West moved to pour billions more in aid into Ukraine. Fighting raged in the Donbas, the industrial heartland in eastern Ukraine that Putin is bent on capturing.
Russian forces shelled a vital highway and kept up attacks on a critical city in the Luhansk region, hitting a school, among other sites. Luhansk is part of the Donbas.
The Kremlin had sought control of Mariupol to complete a land corridor between Russia and the Crimean Peninsula, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014, and free up troops to join the more significant battle for the Donbas. The city’s loss also deprives Ukraine of a vital seaport.
Mariupol endured some of the worst sufferings of the war and became a worldwide symbol of defiance. An estimated 100,000 people remained in a prewar population of 450,000, many trapped without food, water, heat or electricity. Relentless bombardment left rows upon rows of shattered or hollowed-out buildings.
A maternity hospital was hit by a lethal Russian airstrike on March 9, producing searing images of pregnant women being evacuated from the place. A week later, about 300 people were reported killed in a bombing of a theatre where civilians were taking shelter, although the actual death toll could be closer to 600.
Satellite images in April showed what appeared to be mass graves just outside Mariupol, where local officials accused Russia of concealing the slaughter by burying up to 9,000 civilians.
Earlier this month, hundreds of civilians were evacuated from the plant during humanitarian cease-fires. They spoke of the terror of ceaseless bombardment, the wet conditions underground and the fear that they wouldn’t make it out alive.
As the end drew near at Azovstal, wives of fighters who held out at the steelworks told of what they feared would be their last contact with their husbands.
Olga Boiko, the wife of a marine, wiped away tears as she said that her husband had written to her on Thursday: “Hello. We surrender; I don’t know when I will get in touch with you and if I will at all. Love you. Kiss you. Bye.”