Report
Mariupol: the Azovstal industrial complex, a stake in the fighting
Audio 01:39
Civilians walk past a destroyed building on a street in Mariupol, April 3, 2022. © REUTERS / Aleaxander Ermochenko
Text by: RFI Follow
3 mins
After withdrawing its troops from the kyiv region and northern Ukraine, Russia has made the total conquest of Donbass its priority.
Before the “special operation” launched on February 24, pro-Russian separatists controlled a third of it.
In Mariupol, the capture of the city by the Russian forces stumbles in particular on that of the industrial complex of several factories, including the mythical Azovstal factory, which overlooks the port, on the shores of the Sea of Azov.
Our reporter went there accompanied by pro-Russian separatists.
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It is a small building courtyard about a kilometer from the front line, the last safe and relatively quiet place before the battlefield of the vast area of the industrial complex, says
our special correspondent in Mariupol
,
Anissa El Jabri
.
Pro-Russian soldiers come there to distribute food, medicine and answer questions from those who want to be evacuated to Russia.
Sometimes they organize their departure directly.
In the courtyard we chat in front of an improvised wood fire made from damaged furniture chopped up with an axe;
a single conversation: what is happening a few hundred meters away, where the Ukrainian soldiers are entrenched.
“
When are they going to surrender?
»
“
When are they going to surrender?
but they don't plan to surrender, they will fight until the end.
They prepared well.
Their trenches are filled with concrete.
We shoot them and they don't care
,” said one man.
Among the factories of the gigantic industrial complex so close, there is a chemical plant, but also the Azovstal plant, launched in the thirties under the Soviet Union, rebuilt after the Second World War.
It is one of the largest metallurgical factories in Europe, one of the symbols of the city;
in Mariupol many of them have practiced there.
"
I worked in Azovstal
," says a woman.
Just in our section, there was a basement forty meters deep.
As you can see, the planes are pounding and nothing happens.
They had prepared.
There are large catacombs there.
From February 24 they drove tanks there.
People say there's plenty of room to get them there.
You know Azovstal is like an underground city
”.
Silhouettes often dressed in black
Suddenly a car arrives in the yard from which emerge silhouettes often dressed in black.
The “Chechens”, murmur the inhabitants;
they took up residence in an apartment in one of the buildings.
Eight days ago, Ramzan Khadyrov announced that he was launching one of his battalions in the assault on Azovstal.
Edouard Bassurin, representative of the separatist forces in Donetsk, warned this week in an interview with the Russian channel Perviy Kanal: (in this area, editor's note), "
there are several underground levels dating from the Soviet period, it is not possible to bomb from above, you have to clean up underground.
It will take time.
It makes no sense to mention a date or a calendar
to complete the conquest of Mariupol, he added.
According to him, the Russian and separatist forces must find and block all access to the underground arteries and wait for the surrender of the Ukrainian forces.
Edouard Bassurin had estimated this week fighting in this area "
3,000 or 3,500
" Ukrainian forces but also an undetermined number of inhabitants of Mariupol who had taken up arms.
The capture of this port is strategic for Russia because it would allow it to make the connection between Crimea, annexed in 2014, the region under separatist control and Russian territory.
►Also read
: In Mariupol under the bombs, the daily life of the inhabitants to survive
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