Members of Ukraine’s Azov battalion trapped inside Mariupol’s Azovstal steel plant have said they fear they will be killed if captured by Russian forces, as they pleaded with Ukrainian authorities to help arrange their extraction.
Speaking to the media from inside the besieged steelworks, an Azov commander and lieutenant, looking gaunt and pale, said they had defended the city for the people of Ukraine and the rest of the world and needed a third party to negotiate their exit whether by land or sea.
There are believed to be 2,000 soldiers in the plant, 700 of whom are said to be wounded.
Lieut Illya Samoilenko vowed to fight on, saying his comrades understood they would be killed if captured and that surrender would be a “gift” to the enemy.
“We are witnesses of Russian crimes,” Samoilenko said. “Surrender is not an option because Russia is not interested in our lives.”
All the civilians who were inside the plant have been evacuated, according to Azov’s commander, Denys Prokopenko.
“We need the proper opportunity to be evacuated,” Svyatoslav Palamar, the deputy commander of the Azov regiment. “Another thing that hurts is that the politicians said you continue (fighting) while we evacuate the civilians. But we (are) here defending the people.”
They criticised the Ukrainian government for celebrating the evacuation of several dozen civilians over the past few weeks, while failing to prepare Ukraine over the past eight years for what they say was an inevitable war with Russia.
“The government let this happen to 25,000 people,” said Samoilenko, speaking of the number of civilians in Mariupol that he estimates have died.
Azov forces say they are more than 100km from the nearest Ukrainian forces and cannot make it to safety without help from Ukraine’s authorities.
The Azov battalion has been central to Russia’s justification for invading Ukraine. Russia claims its members are neo-Nazis who are responsible for “Nazifying” Ukraine.
Azov fighters say its membership holds a range of political opinions. Azov formed as a volunteer battalion in 2014 to fight Russian-backed forces and some its leaders are known to hold far-right views. But since 2015, it has been part of the Ukrainian army and no longer attracts only far-right combatants.
Russian propaganda has long exaggerated the domestic influence of Azov in Ukraine as well as the scale of its membership.
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has worked to transform the image of the fighters internationally and in Ukraine. Many now view them as heroes.
Samoilenko said they felt supported by words but asked for aerial attacks on Russian positions and berated the Ukrainian authorities for not defending Ukraine’s southern regions.
“We are doing our job and we are doing our job well. Some of the politicians are not doing their job well,” said Samoilenko, who also said Azov had killed 2,500 Russian soldiers from 24 February to 25 April.
Samoilenko said the weak reaction of the world to Russian aggression in 2014 is one of the reasons why this invasion had happened. He said western countries should have understood that the price of prosperity in Europe had been 15,000 Ukrainian lives in the last eight years, referring to the 2014-22 war, when he said the west had refused to help the battalion.
“We showed that anything is possible,” said Samoilenko. “Please do your job and so we can teach people how to do impossible things.”
Samoilenko also criticised the Ukrainian government for negotiating with Russia, describing them as “barbarians”. He said Azov’s goal was to eliminate the enemy threat by pacifying Russia and that they were not only fighting for Ukraine but the whole of the free world.
Samoilenko declined to say how many soldiers were left in the plant or talk about their supplies, saying that this was classified operational information. The fighters say morale is still high, despite coming under almost constant shelling.
“We’re grateful for the support from the world and this may help,” said Samoilenko “People have seen who we are.”
