WATCH: Azov Battalion Claims Video Shows Civilians Underground Who Have Not Seen ‘Sky Nor Sun’ In Weeks

The controversial Azov Battalion has released a video which it says shows its fighters in Mariupol, which Russia claims to have “liberated”, underground with sheltering civilians.

Uploaded to the Azov Battalion’s YouTube channel and shared by the National Guard of Ukraine — which incorporates the battalion — on its verified Twitter account, the video purportedly shows Azov fighters distributing supplies to civilians holed up underneath the Azovstal steelworks complex, which remains under Ukrainian control.

“We want to see peaceful skies, we want to breathe in fresh air,” said one woman in the video, released on Saturday but supposedly shot on Thursday, per the Associated Press.

“You have simply no idea what it means for us to simply eat, drink some sweetened tea. For us it is already happiness,” she told the wire service, which noted that the “[c]ontents of the video could not be independently verified.”

A girl in the video claimed she and her family had seen “neither the sky, nor the sun” since late February, with Mariupol having come under siege only a short time after the Russian invasion commenced.

Mariupol has proved a tough nut for Russian forces to crack, despite reports of its fall being imminent having circulated for weeks now.

In recent days the Russians claimed it had finally been “liberated”, with the fact that the Ukrainian military remains a threat in the port city’s fortified steelworks being minimised and President Vladimir Putin appearing on video to call off a planned assault — possibly as a ruse — and instruct that it should instead be sealed off.

“There is no need to climb into these catacombs and crawl underground through these industrial facilities. Block off [Azovstal] so that not even a fly comes through,” he said.

The city has been a point of interest throughout the conflict, in part because of its status as a stronghold of the Azov Battalion — formerly an unofficial paramilitary force with neo-Nazi links which the mainstream media do not deny, despite general dismissal of the Russian characterisation of their “special military operation” against a Ukraine led by a Jewish president and Jewish prime minister as a “de-Nazification” mission.

Mariupol is also important due to its strategic position on the map, with Moscow needing to bring it under full control if it is to establish a secure land bridge between the Crimea, annexed in 2014, and Russian-separatist controlled territory in the Donbas and Russia proper — a key war aim.

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2022/04/23/watch-azov-battalion-claims-video-shows-civilians-underground/