Donbass – the martyrdom of Mariupol civilians from 2014 to 2022, as told by its inhabitants
Donbass Insider
April 20, 2022
On 16 April 2022, we returned to Mariupol, very close to the Azovstal factory where the last Ukrainian troops are located. We went to three different locations around the factory to talk to civilians, who told us how the Azov soldiers were shooting at them and their homes. Many of them also told us what happened on 9 May 2014, but also in January 2015, during the shelling of the Vostotchny district, which had been allocated to the DPR (Donetsk People's Republic).
For the martyrdom of the city of Mariupol did not begin in 2022, but eight years earlier, with the massacre of 9 May 2014.
In the courtyard of their building near the Azovstal factory, Valentina and Svetlana tell us what happened on 9 May 2014, Victory Day. One week after the Odessa massacre, and while Donbass rose up against the coup d'état that took place in Kiev, and is preparing for the referendum of 11 May 2014 proclaiming the creation of the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics, a new chief of police in Mariupol is appointed by the post-Maidan authorities, Valery Androchtchouk.
On 9 May 2014, while the Victory Day ceremonies were in full swing, Androchuk ordered the Mariupol police to arrest the demonstrators. An order they refused to carry out. Faced with this rebellion, the new police chief shoots one of his subordinates, barricades himself in an office, then calls in the National Guard. The latter, led by the Ukrainian deputy of the Radical Party, Oleg Liachko, attacked the police building and shot at both the policemen who had sided with the demonstrators and the civilians who had come to support their policemen. Two policemen and seven civilians were killed in the clashes.
Two days after the massacre, the population of Mariupol will vote en masse in the referendum of 11 May 2014, which will validate the creation of the Donetsk People's Republic, as Valentina and Svetlana, who voted that day, tell us.
Svetlana accuses the then mayor, Yuri Khotlubay, of having been "mysteriously absent" on that famous day of 9 May 2014. An absence due to the fact that, according to her, the mayor of Mariupol was aware of what was going to happen, just as he was aware in January 2015, that his city was going to be bombed, not by the DPR, but by the Ukrainian army!
In January 2015, when the Rada was preparing to declare Russia an "aggressor state", a similar vote was held in Mariupol in the city council, according to Svetlana. But the result was not what was expected. Khotlubay's raised hand was met with silence in the chamber of municipal deputies. According to her, it was as punishment for this failure that the bombing of the Vostotchny district was organized on 24 January 2015.
This eastern district of Mariupol was then subjected to intense shelling with Grad and Hurricane multiple rocket launchers, which resulted in 31 deaths and 117 injuries. Most of the victims were civilians, including children. According to Svetlana, the rescue vehicles stood by in a column far from the bombed area, and set off once the shelling was over. According to her, the mayor had been warned about what was going to happen.
Unsurprisingly, this shelling was attributed to the DPR, including by the OSCE, despite the fact that the DPR has never possessed a Uragana multiple rocket launcher (unlike Ukraine). I will not go back over the obvious partiality of the OSCE, which it was recently discovered by the two people's republics, that its ceasefire surveillance cameras were in fact used to spy on the soldiers of the people's militia and to correct the artillery fire of the Ukrainian army (which could moreover control the said cameras)!
Svetlana's testimony confirms that it was not the DPR, but the Ukrainian army that fired on Marioupol on 24 January 2015, warning the mayor in advance, who was thus able to put the rescue trucks under cover while waiting for the end of the shelling!
See the report filmed in Marioupol on 16 April 2022, with French subtitles:
Valentina, and other civilians interviewed at the various locations we visited, also told us about the crimes committed by soldiers of the neo-Nazi Azov regiment against civilians over the past two months. Azov soldiers have fired mortars at civilians fetching water, occupied the upper floors of a nearby hospital, thrown a grenade into a flat where two women pensioners were staying, and fired on buildings to destroy them when neither the Russian army nor the DPR people's militia were in the area!
Since then, Russia has repeatedly offered the Ukrainian soldiers holed up in the Azovstal factory to surrender, with guarantees that they will not be killed, and that they will be treated properly and with dignity according to the standards of international law. Despite this, the Ukrainian soldiers refused to surrender, before shouting everywhere that there would be a thousand civilians with them in the underground, and that humanitarian corridors are needed to evacuate them, once the assault on the factory has begun!
As some Russian commentators have pointed out, if there were civilians with them in the Azovstal basement, and they wanted to evacuate them, why didn't they let them leave the plant when Russia opened safe corridors for the soldiers to surrender? If they prevented these civilians from leaving, it means that they are holding them hostage to use them as human shields! This means that the Ukrainian soldiers in Azovstal are nothing more than terrorists!
Moreover, the videos supposedly proving their presence in the underground do not actually prove anything. As the Telegram channel "
?? ?
?" (war on fakes) pointed out, the setting of the videos showing the Ukrainian soldiers, and those showing the civilians allegedly with them is different.
The women and children interviewed said they were in a basement but did not specify whether it was the Azovstal basement. Moreover, the basement shown is at most a hundred people, not a thousand, and its size is more like that of a typical building basement, rather than the (huge) factory basement. The video with the civilians shows a noisy basement, while the one with the soldiers is quiet, and the color of the walls is not the same either. The shelter with the civilians has green walls and grey plastic pipes, while the one with the soldiers has blue walls and white pipes.
Moreover, the few Azov soldiers captured recently have stated that there are no civilians in the factory, and even Zelensky in his recent interview spoke only of Ukrainian soldiers. And magically this story about civilians came out when the Russian and DPR armed forces began the assault and took control of the northern part of the Azovstal factory. I don't think it takes a rocket scientist to see that this is a sordid fake to try to prevent the complete elimination of the soldiers of the neo-Nazi Azov regiment in the basement of the factory.
But to make sure that it cannot be accused of crimes against civilians, Russia today organized new secure corridors and a ceasefire, so that those inside the Azovstal factory (civilians or military) can evacuate or surrender.
While no civilians (or soldiers for that matter) came out of the basement of the factory itself, this humanitarian corridor allowed more than 120 civilians trapped in the basements of the houses right in front of the main Azovstal checkpoint to come out, and finally be evacuated, as our colleagues from War Gonzo show.
According to a message published by Ramzan Kadyrov, Azovstal will be under Russian control very soon, which will mark the end of the battle for Mariupol, and the beginning of the battle for Kramatorsk and Slaviansk.
Christelle Néant