https://www-eldiario-es.translate.goog/internacional/planta-azovstal-fortaleza-sovietica-tuneles-subterraneos-resistencia-ucraniana-mariupol_1_8928055.html?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp

The Azovstal plant, a Soviet fortress of underground tunnels for the Ukrainian resistance in Mariupol

The huge metallurgical plant built in Soviet times has become the last great stronghold of the Ukrainian fighters and the main objective of the Russian forces in the city

A huge metallurgical plant built during Soviet times has become the last stronghold of organized Ukrainian forces in the devastated city of Mariupol . Ninety years after its furnaces began producing iron, the Azovstal industrial complex – considered one of the largest steel mills in Europe – is now the clinging spot for surrounded and outnumbered Ukrainian troops defending this strategic enclave from southeastern Ukraine 50 days after the start of the Russian siege.

The plant, the scene of fierce fighting during the invasion, is located in an industrial area that faces the Sea of ​​Azov and encompasses more than 11 kilometers of buildings, furnaces, underground plants and railway tracks. The place seems to resist the Russian forces, who claim to have gained control of the rest of the city. Moscow has repeatedly demanded that the fighters surrender and kyiv has rejected it, assuring that its soldiers "will fight to the end".

Since the start of the Russian siege of Mariupol, Ukrainian authorities have said the factory has been repeatedly attacked by Putin's forces and nearly destroyed. Videos and images show the huge steel complex turned into a landscape described as apocalyptic: smoke, destroyed and charred buildings among labyrinthine pipes, furnaces and other industrial facilities.

The ships and tunnels of this factory turned into a fortress have given the possibility of resisting the Ukrainian forces, despite their numerical inferiority –six times smaller, according to the Ukrainian president Volodímir Zelenski–. But what supplies they have and how long they can last is anyone's guess. The forces in charge of defending Mariupol include marines, brigades and also the ultra-nationalist Azov Battalion.

The number of fighters used by the metallurgical plant – as well as those still active in Mariupol – is unclear. Russia put no more than 2,500 Ukrainian troops sheltering in Azovstal as of April 16, saying days earlier that hundreds had surrendered.

The Mariupol City Council, whose authorities have left the city, has assured that there are at least 1,000 civilians in the underground shelters of the metallurgical plant, mostly women with children and the elderly. After dismissing these claims as false, the head of the Russian National Defense Control Center, Mikhail Mizintsev, demanded on Tuesday that the Ukrainian authorities, "if there are any civilians housed in Azovstal", take all measures to free them.

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This Wednesday, an evacuation point has been set up in the vicinity of the factory after what the Kiev government has described as a "preliminary agreement" with Moscow to open a humanitarian corridor from Mariupol, although in the end "it has not worked as planned ”. A Ukrainian military officer has said civilians were too scared to go to agreed evacuation points because Azovstal is under constant shelling and he says several bunkers below the plant still house 80-100 civilians each.

A commander of the Ukrainian forces has recognized in a video that his troops face the "last days or even hours" in the guts of the steel plant, which has not produced steel for days. “This is a communication to the world. It could be our last message. We may have days or even hours left. The enemy outnumbers us 10 to 1,” said Serhiy Volyna, head of the 36th battalion of the Ukrainian Navy. The Russians, he says, attack them with artillery and tanks from the ground. "We only defend one place: the plant, where Mariupol's military defense and numerous civilians have sheltered from attacks."

“We are surrounded. They are bombing us with everything they can", a Ukrainian soldier also told theNew York Times . "Our only plan is for our forces to break through the blockade so we can get out of here." Mikhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the Ukrainian president, tweeted on Tuesday that Russian forces were shelling Azovstal with powerful bunker buster bombs.

Last week, a Russian separatist deputy commander described the factory as a "fortress in a city",as reported by Reuters. "The Azovstal factory is a huge space with so many buildings that the Russians… just can't find [Ukrainian forces]," kyiv-based military analyst Oleh Zhdanov told the agency. Another expert, Sergiy Zgurets, indicated that these are huge territories with workshops that cannot be destroyed from the air, "which is why the Russians are using heavy bombs."

"It's a city under a city," said Yan Gagin, who identifies himself to the New York Times as a Russian adviser to the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic. Gagin admits that the Russian campaign has been hampered by the sophisticated network of underground passages, rooms and communication systems.

Several voices have pointed out that this steel factory is designed to withstand a nuclear war. “[The plant] has nuclear bunkers, tunnels, it is built to survive a nuclear conflict, they are really well prepared for defense. (…) I suspect that, unless they are annihilated, they will be there for a long time, ” Justin Crump , a military expert at the consultancy Sybilline, told the BBC. Aglaya Snetkov, a Russian security expert at University College London, also explained a few days ago that this facility has so far resisted capture because it is built to withstand significant damage.

A spokeswoman for the owner company, Metinvest, has said the bunkers below were already used in 2014, when Kremlin-backed separatists tried to take Mariupol. "Since the first invasion, we have kept the bunkers in good condition and supplied with food and water," added Galina Yatsura, who has also assured that the basement of the plant can accommodate 4,000 people.

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hit by two wars

Azovstal is in the hands of Metinvest, a group controlled by Rinat Akhmetov, considered the richest man in Ukraine. As reported on its website by the company Azovstal Iron & Steel Works, one of the largest metallurgical companies in Ukraine, its production facilities allowed in peacetime to produce 5.7 million tons of iron, 6.2 million tons of steel and 4.7 million tons of finished rolled products per year.

It is not the first time that this plant, the livelihood of thousands of people, has suffered the onslaught of a war. The concrete foundations of the first blast furnace were laid in 1930, in the middle of the Soviet era, and in 1941, the advance of the Nazi Army troops meant that the Azovstal equipment and its personnel had to be evacuated to the Urals in 600 railway cars. Two years later, almost all the facilities were blown up in the withdrawal of German troops.

After the disappearance of the Soviet Union, in 1991, the plant became the property of the Ukrainian State, whose Government five years later included it in its privatization program, according to EFE. It was in 2006 that Azovstal finally became part of the Metinvest group, led by billionaire Akhmetov.

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Assault on Azovstal continues

In one of its last parts of the war this Wednesday, the Ukrainian Army has said that the main efforts of the Russian forces are focused on the capture of Mariupol, continuing the assault in the Azovstal plant area. The Russian Defense Ministry has once again given an ultimatum to the Ukrainian fighters to surrender.

Analysts from the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) agree in their latest assessment that Russian forces continue to prioritize capturing the steel plant, where the Ukrainians appear to be holding their ground. Limited street fighting continued to take place in the center of the city on Wednesday. They believe that on April 16 they captured the city's port, where pockets of Ukrainian resistance had also been reported.

ISW experts believe that Russian troops and aircraft will continue to attack the factory and have insisted that the final assaults are likely to continue to cost them dearly. They see it as likely that the Kremlin will try to speed up the taking of Mariupol "judging by the large presence" of Russian media in the area. "The Russians can announce success even if Ukrainian forces maintain their control over parts of Azovstal, or they can wait until Russian or proxy forces have secured the entire facility."

In an interview with the BBC, Malcolm Chalmers of the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi) argues that Ukrainian forces in Mariupol have managed to retain thousands of Russian soldiers who would otherwise have been redeployed north for the main battle. in Donbas. "The defenders of Mariupol, by having lasted so long, have made a significant contribution to the overall war effort, even if they are eventually overwhelmed."

The fate of Mariupol is important for the development of the war. Located on the shores of the Sea of ​​Azov, it is a strategic enclave between the annexed Crimea and the pro-Russian separatist territories of Donbas, in the industrial east. Its capture is seen as allowing Russia to secure a land corridor between the two areas, depriving Ukraine of an important port and freeing up Russian troops for the expansion of the Donbas offensive, which kyiv and Moscow say has already begun.

In this sense, it is believed that with the capture of Mariúpol the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, would score a strategic victory after the failure of the offensive on kyiv. According to some analysts, it may also be a propaganda opportunity for Moscow, which has focused, among other things, on the presence of the Azov Battalion, which only forms a small part of the Ukrainian fighting forces.

For Ukrainians, Mariupol has become a symbol of resistance to Putin's attack. A month and a half of siege has made it the scene of the worst horrors of war. Local authorities estimate that the relentless shelling and fighting in Mariupol has killed at least 21,000 people. Large areas of infrastructure have been destroyed.

An estimated 100,000 people remain in the city, out of a pre-war population of 450,000, trapped without food, water, heat or electricity, conditions that have been repeatedly described as "apocalyptic" and "hell". Thousands of civilians have managed to escape by their own means and at the risk of their lives, with kyiv repeatedly accusing Moscow of impeding attempts to launch an evacuation operation and deporting civilians against their will.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coke_(fuel)

put the cocaine back in

>>16172328

Historically, clinker from coal-burning steamships simply was discarded overboard, leaving detectable trails on the seabed of some prominent steamship routes. As such, the deposits have proven to be of both biological and archaeological interest.

>The forces in charge of defending Mariupol include marines, brigades and also the ultra-nationalist Azov Battalion.

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>We only defend one place: the plant

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>Azovstal is in the hands of Metinvest, a group controlled by Rinat Akhmetov, considered the richest man in Ukraine.

>>16172320

>it may also be a propaganda opportunity for Moscow, which has focused, among other things, on the presence of the Azov Battalion, which only forms a small part of the Ukrainian fighting forces.

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>>16172424

>>16172582

>>16172684

>Liberals warming up for all the mental gymnastics they're about to do.

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They once said exactly the same thing about Ukraine.

https://t.me/DonbassDevushka/3472

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