Video has emerged from inside the besieged Azovstal steel factory in Mariupol showing women and children saying they are “running out of strength” and urgently need to be evacuated to Ukrainian-controlled territory.
The film was recorded on Thursday. The women say 15 children live in tunnels under the facility, ranging in age from babies to teenagers. They are trapped along with their families and other civilians, including factory workers.
The video shows several children, one of whom appears to be doing homework in a coloring book, surrounded by clothing and makeshift beds. A boy says that after living in a dungeon for weeks, he desperately wants to see sunlight again and breathe fresh air outside.
An unnamed woman says she has spent 50 days underground since February 25, the second day of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Others say they fled to the facility in early March when Russian troops bombarded their homes with artillery and airstrikes.
Food and water are almost gone, the woman said, people “on the brink of starvation.” “All the supplies we brought are running low. Soon we won’t even have enough food for the children.”
She added: “We are here and we need help. We are at the epicenter of events and we cannot get out. My child needs to be evacuated to a peaceful area and so do others. We ask for guarantees for the safety of our children.”
The woman continued, “We are concerned for the lives of our children and [elderly] Parents who need medical care. You are running out of strength and vitality. Not a day without shelling. They are even scared to go to the toilet.”
The Ukrainian government has attempted to set up a humanitarian corridor that would allow civilians inside the facility to exit safely. The sprawling factory is a base for Ukraine’s Azov Battalion, part of the National Guard, which filmed the video.
Under cover of darkness, Ukrainian armed forces managed to deliver weapons to the encircled soldiers by helicopter, said Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, adding: “We have a difficult situation, but our army is defending our state. “
About 80 civilians fled Mariupol in four buses on Wednesday. Ukraine says subsequent attempts have failed because Russian troops continue to shell the rendezvous point. They add that Moscow forcibly transferred 40,000 residents to Russian territory.
Putin declared victory in Mariupol on Thursday. He said his forces, which control the rest of the city and have flown a flag on the TV tower, would not attempt to enter the plant. Instead, they would seal it off so “not even a fly can escape,” he told Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.
In reality, Moscow has resumed airstrikes and is attempting to storm the steel plant, Ukraine’s presidential aide Oleksiy Arestovych said on Saturday. He told national television: “The enemy is trying to smother the last resistance of the Mariupol defenders in the Azovstal region.”
Russian units continue to hide evidence of their crimes by recovering bodies from the city’s rubble, Ukrainian officials said. Satellite images show two new mass graves next to an existing cemetery in the village of Manhush, 15 km west of Mariupol. Between 3,000 and 9,000 civilians are said to be buried there.
The casualties include civilians killed on March 16 when a Russian warplane leveled the city’s theater. According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, 300 people died in the strike. The theater was used as a refuge by about 1,500 women and children.
Having failed to capture Kyiv, the Kremlin has changed its war plan. The current goal is the “liberation” of the eastern Donbass region. On Friday, a Russian general said a second goal is the creation of a land corridor linking the separatist so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics with Crimea and Moldova’s breakaway republic of Transnistria.
In its latest intelligence update, Britain’s MoD said Russian tactical battalion groups massed in and around Donbass had “not made any major progress in the last 24 hours”. “Ukrainian counterattacks continue to hamper efforts,” it said.
Further north, the Ukrainian army recaptured some areas. According to regional governor Oleh Synehubov, three villages around the city of Kharkiv were liberated. Troops secured positions in the villages of Bezruky, Slatine and Prudianka, he said.
Ukraine’s General Staff said it repelled eight Russian attacks and destroyed nine tanks, 18 armored units and 13 vehicles, one tanker and three artillery systems. “Units of Russian occupying forces are regrouping. The enemy continues to launch missile and bomb attacks on military and civilian infrastructure,” it said.
Luhansk Governor Serhiy Haidai said two people were killed by Russian shelling in the town of Popasna on Saturday. He said an evacuation train for residents of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts is expected from the eastern city of Pokrovsk towards the western city of Chop near Ukraine’s border with Slovakia and Hungary.
“Besides the fact that street fighting in the city has been going on for several weeks, the Russian army is constantly firing at multi-storey apartment buildings and private houses,” Haidai wrote on Instagram.
“Only yesterday local residents withstood five enemy artillery attacks. Not all survived.”
Ukrainian authorities said a series of Russian TU-95 missiles fired from the Caspian Sea on Saturday killed at least five people, including a three-month-old baby, and wounded 18 others in Odessa.
Air Force Southern Command added that two missiles also hit residential buildings in the city.
“Five Ukrainians were killed and 18 wounded, and these are only the ones we could find,” said the head of the Presidential Office of Ukraine Andriy Yermak. “It is likely that the death toll will be high.”
In a press conference on Saturday evening, Zelenskyy confirmed that a three-month-old baby was among those killed. “They killed a three-month-old baby,” he said. “The war started when this baby was a month old. Can you even imagine what is happening? They’re just bastards. Just bastards. I can’t think of any other words in this context. They are just bastards.”
On another front, near Kherson, a city under Russian military occupation in southern Ukraine, two Russian generals have been killed while another is in critical condition, the Intelligence Directorate of Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said. According to the statement, the Russian generals were allegedly killed after the Ukrainian military struck the command post of the Russian 49th Army near Kherson on Friday.
Ukrainian authorities on Saturday urged those celebrating Orthodox Easter, one of Ukraine’s biggest festivals, to watch the service online and respect curfews amid fighting with Russian troops, despite a holiday that usually draws crowds .
Both Russia and Ukraine celebrate Orthodox Easter on Sunday, but hopes of a ceasefire faded on Saturday as Ukrainian officials reported on the deadly attack on Odessa and fighting in the east.
“No crowds!” said the governor of the Poltava region southwest of Kyiv, Dmytro Lunin, “there should be no situations where believers gather outside of churches,” he said.