‘Surrender not an option’: Mariupol defenders face final showdown with Russia

KYIV: Ukraine’s last soldiers in the port city of Mariupol face a brutal final showdown on Sunday with besieging Russian forces, who are hoping to deliver a critical win ahead of the country’s victory day.

President Volodymyr Zelensky is also set to hold talks with G7 leaders via video conference to discuss the situation in his country, which fears a renewed intensity to Moscow’s offensive after the evacuation of civilians from Mariupol’s Azovstal steelworks.

The complex -- the final pocket of Ukrainian resistance in the devastated port city -- has taken on a symbolic value in the war, with the last soldiers holed up in its sprawling network of underground tunnels and bunkers.

Taking full control of Mariupol would allow Moscow to create a land bridge between the Crimean Peninsula, which it annexed in 2014, and regions run by pro-Russian separatists in the east.

"The enemy is trying to finish off the defenders of Azovstal, they are trying to do it before May 9 to give (Russian President) Vladimir Putin a gift," Oleksiy Arestovych, an aide to Ukraine’s president, said.

Ukraine’s far-right Azov battalion, leading the defence at the steelworks, said one of its fighters had been killed and six wounded when Russian forces opened fire during an earlier attempt to evacuate people by car.

Civilians who have escaped have described passing through Russian "filtration" sites where several evacuees told AFP they were questioned, strip-searched, fingerprinted, and had their phones and documents checked.

"They asked us if we wanted to go to Russia or to stay in (eastern Ukraine’s self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic) or stay and rebuild the city of Mariupol," said Azovstal evacuee Natalia, who spoke on condition that her full name not be published. "But how can I rebuild it? How can I return there if the city of Mariupol doesn’t exist anymore?"

Earlier, Kyiv’s defence ministry said Russian forces had resumed their assault on the site, despite talk of a truce to allow trapped civilians to flee. Russia’s forces may be seeking to hand Putin a win ahead of Monday’s Victory Day, when the country celebrates its 1945 defeat of Nazi Germany.

With the date fast approaching, Ukrainian officials fear more intense missile and artillery bombardments and renewed assaults as Moscow scrambles for symbolic victories.

At home, Russia will mark the holiday in grand style, with eight Mig-29 fighter jets set to fly over Moscow’s Red Square forming the letter "Z" -- the mark of Russia’s military assault in Ukraine. Meanwhile, Ukraine forces holed up in the sprawling Azovstal steel works in the Russian-controlled city of Mariupol said they would not surrender and vowed to fight as long as needed.

"We, all of the military personnel in the garnison of Mariupol, we have witnessed the war crimes performed by Russia, by the Russian army. We are witnesses. Surrender is not an option because Russia is not interested in our lives," said Ilya Samoilenko, an Azov regiment intelligence officer.

The Azovstal steel mill is the last pocket of Ukrainian resistance in the devastated port city and its fate has taken on a symbolic value in the broader battle since Russia’s invasion. "All our supplies are limited. We still have water. We still have munitions. We will have our personal weapons. We will fight until the best resolution of the situation," Samoilenko said.

Ukraine has said that all women, children and elderly civilians have been allowed to flee from Azovstal as part of a humanitarian mission coordinated by the United Nations and the Red Cross.

Meantime, French President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday marked the anniversary of the Allies’ victory over Nazi Germany in World War II, overshadowed this year by the war in Ukraine.

Paris’ traditional WWII commemorations began on the Champs-Elysees avenue, with the president laying a wreath at the statue of Charles de Gaulle, the wartime French resistance leader and later founding president of France’s Fifth Republic.