Various news sources have reported the steel plant in Mariupol as the last Ukrainian holdout in southeastern Ukraine. There are still about 200 civilians in the plant, along with Ukrainian military personnel. I watched video of 100 or so civilians being evacuated a few days ago. Why weren’t they able to evacuate all of them? In the video, they were boarding busses in a very slow manner, so didn’t seem afraid of getting bombed by the Russians. Just now, CNN reported that there is a plan to evacuate the rest. Why would they report that? Wouldn’t Russians now be more ready to prevent it? And considering that it looks like Russia has controlled the entire surrounding area (mostly by bombing it to ruins), what’s the point of holding onto the plant? What’s the best possible outcome? The situation overall is just very confusing to me, so any other color on this would be greatly appreciated.
I could be wrong, but I believe I heard there was an agreed-to ceasefire in that area for some number of hours to allow for a limited number of Ukrainians to leave. That would explain the lack of urgency and the limited number of buses.
That leads to another question: why would the Russians agree to that, and if they did, why wouldn’t they just let all the civilians go?
Perhaps the thought of either starving hundreds of innocent civilians to death or a total blood bath might be bad PR for the Russian Army? Of course, that never stopped them before.
You’ll have to ask Putin that question since he’s now taken over running this war from the dwindling number of generals left.
The basic thing is they are either unwilling or under orders to not surrender yet. The Russians have decided to mostly wait them out. Occasionally the Ukrainians try to take up firing positions. So the Russians do attack at a low level. They know there are still a possibly high number of civilians inside, so they don’t just hammer the place. It is also a high value facility for after the war. So if Russia does retain it, they would like it to be less damaged.
Russia knows the layout of the place. Taking it by sending in soldiers would incur high losses. It was built for military defense. It is completely surrounded and sealed off, so wait.
There are also rumors that there may be some persons in there that might be embarrassing to non Russian sides. No idea if this is real. But a few odd things have happened regarding the place.
The civilian situations in this war in the eastern areas are very suspect. I will be flamed for saying this but. It does seem that the Ukraine forces fighting in the east prefer to keep a lot of civilians in the battle zone. It would be advantageous for the Russians to have the civilians out of the areas. Not keep them in.
I don’t know why they agreed to it, but this ceasefire is a little different then previous attempts. Both the UN and Red Cross were negotiating hard for it. It’s possible the terms included the number of buses, number of trips, etc.
Heavy bombing of the facility is underway as I write. I don’t think Russia has any desire to see it standing given all the bad press surrounding it.
I would think they let some civilians out for PR, but the civilians remaining in place use up the supplies the Ukrainian military use, making it easier to starve them out.
That’s the thing about being invaded: You’ve got civilians in the battle zone, because that’s where they live. I mean, there’s a reason why Russia doesn’t have any of their civilians in the battle zones.