Children, elderly people and wounded soldiers are still trapped in the tunnels of the Mariupol steel mill where Putin ordered “not a fly to leave”

In the land of the great theater master, Konstantin Stanislaski, his disciple Boleslawaski who introduced the theatrical method in the United States, or authors such as Anton Chekhov, the representation of Vladimir Putin and his reappeared Minister of Defense to announce the seizure of the first major city in Ukraine after almost two months of war, showed a marked contrast. It was an extraordinary stage poverty. Minister Sergei Shoigu — who had been fired from the cast immediately after the first failures in the invasion — reappeared to awkwardly inform his boss that after 50 days of heavy bombing and 80% of the city's infrastructure destroyed, Russian forces had taken control of Mariupol. But he had to admit, immediately afterwards, that this was not so because there was still a focus of resistance in the huge Azovstal factory.

- “Dear Vladimir Vladimirovich, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation and the People's Militia of the Donetsk People's Republic have liberated Mariupol. The remains of the nationalist formations have taken refuge in the industrial zone of the Azovstal plant,” said Minister Shoigu nervously reading some papers he had in his hand.

It was when the central phrase of the play appeared, in which the supreme leader showed himself to be a man of firm convictions, albeit magnanimous.

- “I think that the proposed assault of the industrial zone is not appropriate. I order to cancel it... You have to think about the lives of our soldiers and officers, you don't have to penetrate those catacombs and crawl underground. Block the whole area in such a way that not a fly will pass.”

The lights go out and the curtain falls. The theatrical conclusion is clear: the leader does not want to sacrifice his army and therefore orders to do the same with those who resist in the catacombs of the steel mill. There are about 2,000, among civilians and militiamen, who are refugees in the tunnels. They're going to let them die. It's not worth risking any Russian to get them out of there. “It's impractical,” Putin said at one point.

The commander of the Ukrainian troops who resists on the premises of this factory that has 11 square kilometers and a huge network of tunnels underground, said in a message he sent through a video on Facebook that his forces are totally surpassed. Major Serhiy Volyna assured that there are about 500 wounded fighters and many civilians with them in the Azovstal plant basement. “We are probably facing our last days, if not hours,” he said. Volyna is in charge of what remains of the 36th Marine Brigade and the fighters of the Azov Regiment, a force of far-right volunteers who were incorporated into the ranks of the Army and who are recognized for their discipline and courage in combat.

The civilians in the shelters are residents of the plant and relatives of the workers who know the intricate corridors in various basements. They arrived there fleeing heavy Russian bombardments that have been going on for more than a month and after being prevented from leaving Mariupol to the west of the country. They've been without food, heat or medicine for weeks. Images uploaded to the Telegram network show rooms full of boys, women and old people with depressed faces after so many days of confinement.

In her video, Volyna described the desperate situation faced by the fighters and asked foreign leaders for help to bring them to safety. Major Volyna also tagged President Joe Biden, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the post. “We appeal and plead with all world leaders to help us. We ask them to use the extraction procedure and take us to the territory of a third State,” he said.

In this historical network of buildings, blast furnaces, hoppers, pipes, railway tracks and docks, Ukrainian resistance was walled against the assault by blood and fire by the Russians who had to destroy the city of Mariupol to stay with it, but who failed to break what has been its symbol of work for almost a hundred years. progress. This is where the defenders retreated after almost a month and a half of mansalva bombardments. They held out much longer than was reasonable. Until they posed a guerrilla war hidden among impenetrable steel structures.

A commander of the Pro-Russian separatists described the place as “a fortress in a city, a medieval wall”. Above it is a layer of iron and steel plates, which gives a unique protection. Below is a huge network of tunnels where Ukrainians can move without being seen. The “Azovites”, as they call those in Mariupol because they are on the shores of the Sea of Azov, talk about the catacombs in the center of the city that are supposedly connected with those of the factory. They say that there are several entrances: “right on Nielsen Street, on the neighboring Kuindzhi Street and in the Garden City”. There are no plans for these underground structures. Most were dug during the resistance to Nazi occupation in 1941. Subfloors at the steel plant were later built by the Soviets to serve as shelter for the 40,000 workers in the event of a nuclear attack.

Azovstal has a long history related to the industrialization of the Soviet Union. It was created in 1930 by decision of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the National Economy of the USSR and entered the production line in 1933 when its blast furnace took out the first iron sheet. In January 1935, steel production began when the first 250-ton tilting kiln began to operate, a significant technological advance for the time. Six years later, with the Nazi occupation, the plant was deactivated and despite the efforts of the Germans to re-ignite the ovens, they were unable to do so. Only in September 1943, when the Red Army regained control of Mariupol, did reconstruction begin. With the fall of the Soviet Union, the plant returned to very low levels of production and its kilns caused terrible pollution throughout the region.

Until it was privatized and the plant began to produce nearly 6 billion tons of steel a year, an absolute record and a huge success for Ukraine independent of Moscow's power. Azovstal Iron and Steel Works is an integrated company, subsidiary of Italian company Metinvest. Until the Russian invasion, it produced rolled profiles and sheet metal semi-finished products used in shipbuilding, electrical engineering, bridge construction and the production of large-diameter pipes for gas and oil pipelines. It is also the largest manufacturer of railway rails in Eastern Europe. Sell to everyone. The owner of this plant and the entire holding company is Rinat Akhmetov, the richest man in Ukraine.

Last week, the Russian Ministry of Defense claimed that more than 1,000 soldiers of the 36th Marine Brigade of Ukraine, including 162 officers, had surrendered there. But it wasn't true. Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych clarified that these marines had managed to break through a “very risky move” to join the Azov Regiment, and together they continued to resist in Azovstal. And here appears the ghost of this force that originated as a battalion of ultra-nationalists who fought against pro-Russian separatists since 2014 in Donetsk and Luhansk. It is from this element that Vladimir Putin takes when he claims that his “special operation” in Ukraine is aimed at “denazifying” the country.

The Azov Battalion has its origins in the 2014 conflict, founded by a “group of young racists” members of other far-right ideology groups and football hooligans whose beginnings are in the voluntary paramilitaries created during the Maidan Revolution, the popular uprising for Ukraine to join the Union European. The best known leader of the Azovs is Andriy Biletsky who says this kind of thing: “We have to lead the white races of the rest of the world in a final crusade... against the lower races (Untermenschen) led by the Semites.” Biletsky left the Azov Battalion, ran for election with a far-right party and lost his seat in the last elections. It's been years since he stopped leading the militiamen.

“But the Azov Battalion no longer exists. It is now another regiment in the Ukrainian Army,” Anton Shekhovtsov, director of the Center for Democratic Integrity in Austria and expert in studies of the European extreme right, explained to the site to Newtral.es. He was joined by other nationalist fighters but far from Nazism and the government integrated them into the National Guard under the name of the Azov Regiment. According to Andreas Umland, an analyst at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs, “while it cannot be denied that Azov has a complicated history, its origins are neo-Nazis, Russia is exaggerating the problem to use it to its advantage. It gives Putin the excuse he needed to justify the unjustifiable.”

There is another element that further spice up this history of the steel plant and the resistance. The assault on Miriupol and, particularly Azovstal, involves the regiment of Chechens led Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of that Russian republic with a majority Muslim population. The “Kadýrovtsy” are known for their brutality in battle. They cut off the heads and genitals of their enemies and practice highly effective torture techniques. Kadyrov is a protégé of Putin and was shown several times in recent days on social media giving orders to his men on the outskirts of Mariupol.

There, beneath that labyrinth of iron beams and steel sheets, between neo-Nazis and Muslim militiamen, is where about a thousand civilians are trapped and without any possibility of humanitarian aid reaching them if Putin's order to “not a fly pass” is strictly complied with. A non-theatrical tragedy.

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