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NYT’s and the Telegram Application April 22, 2022

Posted by bohdan.warchomij in : Metaphor Online , trackback

ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine — Staff Sgt. Leonid Kuznetsov of the Ukrainian National Guard is running out of time.

He and his comrades holding out in the Azovstal steel factory in Mariupol have only light weapons — machine guns, pistols — to defend themselves against Russian tanks, jets and artillery. They are holed up in a small, reinforced-cement bunker with peeling blue paint on the walls and about two meters of earth over their heads.

Even if the shelling that has been their constant companion for weeks comes to end with Vladimir V. Putin’s order on Thursday to end the assault on the factory, the Russian president’s decision to blockade the last bastion of Ukrainian resistance “so that no fly can escape” could be a death sentence.

“I’m alive and healthy for now, but the situation is very difficult,” said Sergeant Kuznetsov, who is 25. “We’re at the end of our food and water. We have about 1,000 civilians at the factory. I can’t say how many soldiers we have. There are many, many wounded and not enough medicine. The smallest injury can be fatal; there are not even simple bandages.”

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A Ukrainian family arrives in Zaporizhzhia after fleeing Russian-occupied Mariupol in Eastern Ukraine, Monday.
A Ukrainian family arrives in Zaporizhzhia after fleeing Russian-occupied Mariupol in Eastern Ukraine, Monday.Credit…Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

The Russian military’s destruction of Mariupol will be recorded in history as one of the singular calamities of Mr. Putin’s disastrous war in Ukraine. A vivacious seaside town of about half a million people has been turned to a charred and pockmarked hellscape, the bodies of soldiers, civilians and their pets littering the once leafy avenues.

On Thursday, Russia’s defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, announced to Mr. Putin that the ruined city was now fully under Russian control, save for the besieged steel plant. There are few buildings left standing and most of the city’s residents, those who have not been killed in weeks of nearly incessant shelling, have fled.

A convoy of yellow buses carrying the latest evacuees arrived here in Zaporizhzhia, northwest of Mariupol, after a harrowing all-night drive through checkpoints manned by jumpy Russian soldiers. They described cold, hunger and weeks living in basements. Days were broken up only by quick dashes to the surface to cook paltry meals on open fires in the courtyard, amid never ending shelling.

“In the city everything is destroyed, it’s terrifying,” said Matvei Popko, a 10-year-old who traveled in the convoy to Zaporizhzhia with his mother, father and grandmother. “At any moment your home could get hit and collapse. For a little more than a month we lived in the basement.”

The zone of Ukrainian control in Mariupol has narrowed to suffocating bunkers under the steel plant like the one where Sergeant Kuznetsov and his fellow soldiers remain, running out of everything, including reserves of hope.

“We’re hoping for help,” he said. “If we don’t get it, we won’t make it out of this factory. We will die here with weapons in our hands defending Ukraine.”

Sergeant Kuznetsov communicated with a reporter by text using the chat app Telegram, and sent a short video of himself sitting in the bunker with a few fellow soldiers nearby. He has an internet connection thanks to Starlink, the satellite internet provider created by Elon Musk.

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Sergeant Kuznetsov inside the Azovstal steel plant.CreditCredit…new york times

Sergeant Kuznetsov chose to join the military after college because he thought that was what a man was supposed to do, his wife, Maria Kuznetsova said in an interview. “It’s his character,” she said. “He thinks that a man must serve to protect his family.”

Ms. Kuznetsova, 23, said she met her future husband when they were students at Mariupol State University. They married a few years later and now have a year-old son named David. Sergeant Kuznetsov served for three years, then retired in December and filed an application to become a police officer.

Then, on Feb. 24, the war broke out.

Ms. Kuznetsova said she repeatedly begged her husband not to rejoin the military, and initially thought she had talked him out of it.

“It’s difficult to let your beloved man go,” she said. “But every day he talked about it, and then quickly gathered up his things and went.”

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Sergeant Kuznetsov with his son, David, and wife, Maria Kuznetsova.
Sergeant Kuznetsov with his son, David, and wife, Maria Kuznetsova.Credit…Maria Kuznetsova

Sergeant Kuznetsov said he was posted to different regions in the city before eventually being assigned to the Azovstal steel plant. For weeks it served as both a military base and a refuge for the families of soldiers and steel workers, as Ukrainian defenders in other parts of the city were killed or forced to retreat.

With no one else left to fight, Russian forces turned their entire might against the factory in recent days, pummeling it day and night with airstrikes, artillery and rockets.

Sergeant Kuznetsov said more than 500 people were suffering from various injuries and there were many, many dead. A number of people sheltering inside have been killed by cave-ins caused by the shelling, he said.

He estimated that he and his fellow soldiers could hold out for another day, perhaps two.

“I ask the whole world to do everything possible to stop the military aggression against independent Ukraine,” he said. “Punish everyone who is responsible for the military action on our territory.”

Ms. Kuznetsova accused the Ukrainian government of abandoning the troops left in the factory complex, though rescuing them would require resources Ukraine can ill afford to spare as its army tries to withstand a new Russian offensive in the east.

Surrender to the Russian forces, Ms. Kutnetsova said, was also out of the question. “It’s a big risk. They could just shoot him.”

Ms. Kuznetsova was able to evacuate with their son on March 20 and is now living in the relative safety of western Ukraine.

As of Thursday evening, Sergeant Kuznetsov had not responded to additional questions. His wife said she had been unable to reach him as well. When last they spoke, on Wednesday, she said he had made it clear that the situation was dire.

“He has no way out,” she said. “He hopes that everything will turn out all right, but he told me to be prepared for any outcome.”

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