Russian Forces Battering Mariupol’s Azovstal Steel Factory Sheltering Hundreds of Civilians: Report

The Russian military on Sunday battered one of the last remaining holdouts in the besieged port city of Mariupol, attempting to storm a massive steel factory holding hundreds of terrified citizens and wounded soldiers, according to Ukrainian officials. The Azovstal steelworks remained under fire over the weekend as Russian forces conducted “offensive operations” in the area, the Ukrainian military command wrote on Facebook. Hours earlier on Sunday, a Ukrainian presidential adviser had announced on social media that “Russian troops are trying to finish off the defenders of Azovstal and more than 1,000 civilians who are hiding at the plant,” Reuters reported. The situation at the plant was “critical,” according to Maj. Serhii Volyna, a Ukrainian commander in Mariupol. “We have very many wounded men, [some] are dying, it’s a difficult [situation] with guns, ammunition, food, medicines…” Volyna said in a Sunday interview uploaded to YouTube. “The situation is rapidly worsening.” Russian and pro-Kremlin Ukrainian officials have publicly denied the storming of the plant since Russian President Vladimir Putin called off the factory barrage last week, declaring the city to have been “liberated.”