SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers are fighting a desperate last stand underneath a massive steel plant in the port city of Mariupol. It's the last bit of the city that's not yet occupied by Russian forces. Those Russian troops charge into the huge network of tunnels under the plant where soldiers and civilians have been sheltering for weeks in a vast network of bunkers. The U.N. has helped to evacuate some civilians. And now the wives and partners of the Ukrainian soldiers are demonstrating, urging the U.N. to evacuate the fighters as well as civilians.
NPR's Joanna Kakissis has this report from southern Ukraine.
UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE: (Singing in Ukrainian).
JOANNA KAKISSIS, BYLINE: The 12 women huddle together, singing Ukraine's national anthem outside a hotel in the southern city of Zaporizhzhia. A young woman, her brown hair in long braids, holds up a banner that reads save our defenders. She tells us her name is Olha.
OLHA: (Through interpreter) Our men don't have much time left. We have to do everything possible to save them. We would do it ourselves if we could.
UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE: (Chanting) Save Azovstal. Save Azovstal.
KAKISSIS: These are the wives and partners of Ukrainian soldiers fighting to hang on to the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, the port city obliterated by Russian bombing and shelling. The U.N. is evacuating the civilians there, but leaving the soldiers to fight what Yaroslava Ivantsova compares to a modern-day battle of Thermopylae.
YAROSLAVA IVANTSOVA: (Through interpreter) I've heard people call our soldiers the 300, the Spartans. But right now we don't need dead heroes. We need living heroes.
KAKISSIS: Ivantsova is tall and no-nonsense, a 48-year-old-grandmother with freckles and platinum-blonde hair. She met her husband 30 years ago, when he was a new soldier and she was a college freshman. He's Ukrainian, and she was born in Russia.
IVANTSOVA: (Through interpreter) I feel ashamed to admit that I was born in Russia. I don't want to be associated with this country. Look what they have done to Mariupol. I don't even talk to my relatives there.
KAKISSIS: She and her husband have four children and four grandchildren. They lived in Mariupol. He helped defend it when pro-Russian separatists attacked it in 2015. And then when Russian troops invaded in February of this year, he rushed to defend Mariupol once again. Other soldiers joined him.
IVANTSOVA: (Through interpreter) They have been defending Mariupol since March 1, when the Russian troops surrounded the city, and they've been trying to hold on.
KAKISSIS: Ivantsova says her husband wants to fight to the last bullet. And she understands that, as a soldier, he signed up for this life. But she worries that if he and his fellow soldiers are captured, they will be executed.
IVANTSOVA: (Speaking Russian).
KAKISSIS: "Nobody trusts the army of Vladimir Putin," she says, referring to Russia's president. "He can barely honor a cease-fire."
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Non-English language spoken).
KAKISSIS: A day later, she joins the other military wives to prepare for another demonstration, urging the U.N. and Ukrainian authorities to get their husbands out of the steel plant. The women set up in a parking lot of a home improvement store in Zaporizhzhia that serves as a meeting point for displaced Ukrainians.
A military wife who gives her name as Katia often comes here to welcome them.
KATIA: (Speaking Ukrainian).
KAKISSIS: "We are also very worried about the civilians who are trapped in Azovstal," she says. "But someone needs to advocate for our husbands."
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Non-English language spoken).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Non-English language spoken).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (Non-English language spoken).
KAKISSIS: The women even make their case to a local Greek Catholic priest and ask him, can the pope help? They have heard that the fighting at the Azovstal plant keeps getting worse and worse. Some of the soldiers have sent goodbye messages to their partners.
Olha, the young woman with the braids - she's crying. She's thinking of her fiance.
OLHA: (Through interpreter) He always asks me how I'm doing, if I need help, if he can do anything for me. And he writes very tender poems for me.
KAKISSIS: Yaroslava Ivantsova hasn't heard from her husband in days.
IVANTSOVA: (Through interpreter) There is no mobile communication. I ask the girls, but absolutely no one has communication. I'm so worried. I even tried to find my anti-anxiety pills. I hid them somewhere.
UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE: (Chanting in Ukrainian).
KAKISSIS: As the demonstration begins, she drops her bag on the ground and clutches a handwritten banner that reads save us.
Joanna Kakissis, NPR News, Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
