The fall of Mariupol appears at hand as Ukraine is moving to abandon a sprawling steel plant where its soldiers had held out under relentless bombardment for months, which would make it the biggest city to fall into Russian hands.
Military personnel, at least 53 of whom were said to be seriously injured, have been evacuated from the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said on May 16. Mariupol appeared on the verge of falling to the Russians on Tuesday as Ukraine moved to abandon the steel plant where hundreds of its fighters had held out for months under relentless bombardment in the last bastion of resistance in the devastated city.
Russia called it a surrender. The Ukrainians avoided that word and instead said that the plant's garrison had completed its mission and that there was no way to rescue its members militarily in the otherwise Russian-held city. Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar expressed hope that the fighters would be exchanged for Russian prisoners of war. But Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of the lower house of the Russian parliament, said without evidence that there were "war criminals" among the defenders and that they should not be exchanged but tried.
Gaining full control of Mariupol would give Russia an unbroken land bridge to the Crimean Peninsula, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014, and deprive Ukraine of a vital port. It could also free up Russian forces to fight elsewhere in the Donbas, the eastern industrial heartland that the Kremlin is bent on capturing.
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