Angry Planet - Ukraine's Alamo: The Siege of Azovstal

Episode Date: July 29, 2022

Imagine being trapped below ground for weeks, surrounded by soldiers, bombs dropping just a few feet above your head.Food is scarce, rats are everywhere. Is survival possible? And what would it even look like? A trip back home, or to a Russian prison?That was the situation during the siege of the Azovstal Steel Plant in Mariupol, Ukraine. Michael Schwirtz of the New York Times has put together a comprehensive look at the siege, which is being called Ukraine’s Alamo and he’s joining us today to describe what he found.Angry Planet has a substack! Join the Information War to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a world in conflict.https://angryplanet.substack.com/subscribeYou can listen to Angry Planet on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is angryplanetpod.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/angryplanetpodcast/; and on Twitter: @angryplanetpod.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast. Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. People live in a world with their own making. Frankly, that seems to be the problem. Welcome to Angry Planet. Hello and welcome to Angry Planet. I am Jason Fields. And I'm Matthew Galt. Imagine being trapped below ground for weeks, surrounded by soldiers, bombs dropping just a few feet above your head. Food is scarce, rats are everywhere. Is survival possible? And what would it even look like? A trip back home or to a Russian prison?

That was the situation during the siege of Azov Stahl-Steel plant in Maripol, Ukraine. Michael Schwartz of the New York Times has put together a comprehensive look at the siege, which is being called Ukraine's Alamo. He's joining us today to describe what he found. Thank you so much for joining us. Sure, thank. Can you give us a rough outline of the story of the siege? Who was there? How long did it last?

I mean, it begins, obviously, like everything else, on February 24th, Russian forces launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in the wee hours of that morning. Bob started falling, I think, around 4 a.m., at least where I was in the east of Ukraine, that's when they started falling. And very quickly, it became clear that Mariupil, this very strategic port city on the Sea of Azov in southern Ukraine, was going to be a focal point of an initial thrust. Russian forces spilled out of the Crimean Peninsula, which was occupied by Russian 2014. They spilled over the border from Russia proper. And basically, within days, surrounded the city. Ukrainian forces, as they did everywhere, tried to mount a very speedy defense. But unlike in place,

like Kiev where that defense was successful and further west of Mariupil towards Odessa, where I'm now, were Russian forces or were Ukrainian forces push Russian forces back. Mariupil, the defenses, the Ukrainian forces quickly folded and had to melt back into the city. And after a few weeks of very intense fighting, where they ended up was in this massive steel complex. It basically hugged the coast of Ukraine on the sea of. resolve both civilians and soldiers fell back to this place as the safest place they could be to weather the storm that they were in. You said that in your story that there were 30-something bomb shelters in the steel plant? Correct. Correct. 36, I would think. Okay. Why were all of these

bomb shelters there? You can be amazed how many places you go into in this part of the world that have bomb shelters. It's a quirk of the Cold War. These lands in eastern Ukraine and far western Russia were the site of some of the most fierce fighting in World War II. As of Stahl itself, which was built in Stalin's Soviet Union in 1933, was partially destroyed both in the Nazi occupation of Maripal and the lands beyond it and in the Soviet effort to retake it. And so when they were rebuilding As of Stahl, as they were doing in so many other industries after World War II, they had war. on their minds. And it was felt that in these big industrial enterprises, this would be a place where people could go to find safety should any, you know, should war break out again.

And they were kept stocked with food and more or less, I mean, are we talking about food that dated back to the Cold War or were these things maintained? No, no. So what happened, they had fallen into disrepair in the 90s. The Cold War ended. The threats of nuclear annihilation seemed to receive from people's minds. I don't know what these bomb shelters were used for in the 90s and early 2000s, but they were not hiding from missile strikes was not on anybody's mind during this period after the Soviet collapse. But what did happen was in 2014, the Russian military, along with separatists, fighters, tied large chunks of eastern Ukraine and for a time occupied Meriupil. And once again, Maripal ended up being at the center of a fight. And it was at this time that the

executives of Azumstahl decided the occupation at that point was a failure. Ukrainian forces pushed the occupiers back out, but the line of control, the line at which where Ukrainian forces and the separatist forces backed by Russian troops and equipment were fighting was just a few miles outside of Mariupil. And so the executives of the plan decided perhaps these bomb shelters might come in handy now that we're so close to a front line of an act of war. and they began to revamp them, start stocking them with food, and they began to actually run for workers there so that they would know how to use these bomb shelters in the case of an emergency.

And like an emergency certainly came. Who was there during the siege? Was it mostly civilians, soldiers? It was a mix. It was a mix. Basically, everybody had the same idea. When the bombs started falling, when apartments started getting hit, when electricity and water and gas went out. large numbers of civilians, particularly those who had worked at the eyes of stahl plants,

knew about these bomb shelters and decided that this would be the safest place to weather the war. The soldiers had a similar but slightly, a similar idea, but a slightly different intention. The soldiers viewed this as an incredible fortress from which they could mount a last stand. The city was surrounded, as I pointed out, they had nowhere else to go. and they had this ready-made walled fortress from which they could continue their fight. And so they fell back as well. And so they were co-inhabiting this space as the Russian forces pushed ever closer in. Some of the soldiers that took refuge in the plant were members of the Azov Regiment.

The Azov Regiment, which actually we've done an episode or two talking about who they were and also various different groups in the area. Did that make a difference with the siege? Did it, who were these guys in the siege? Were they, the whole Russian theory of the war, Kastas Belli, right, was that there are fascists in Ukraine, right? And so as of, I mean, who were these guys? One, I shouldn't have to point this out, but I'm going to point this out. Ukraine is not a fascist, not run by a fascist.

It's had five or six presidents in the span of its brief independence. It has a raucous democratic system that typically brings to power centrist. So it is not a fascist. The significance of Azov is this. The Azov regiment is this. In 2014, when these Russian soldiers and Ukrainian separatists began taking over large thoughts of Ukraine, volunteer units, began popping up to bolster the Ukrainian military military. The Ukrainian military as such was almost non-existence in 2014. These volunteer units filled a gap.

One of these volunteer units was Azov, which sprung up around a host of characters, some of whom had a far-right and heavily nationalist views. Those in the years that have elapsed, the Azov regiment, it started as what was known as the Azov Battalion. It is now known as a regiment, which has become a part of the Ukrainian National Guard that fits in with the hierarchy. of the Russian military command structure. But why this is significant, because, as you said, one of the justifications for the war

put forward by the Kremlin is the denazification of Ukraine and the origins of the Azov regiment and their closeness to figures with far-right ideas gives a veneer of legitimacy to these claims by the Kremlin. And the fact that they were held up as of Stahl

was a, was used by the Kremlin to continue to promote this idea that we were fighting against Nazis. Kind of a long-winded explanation to your question. No, I think that's an important context for that. So I think that's probably when I write Ukraine stories where I talk to people about Ukraine, that's probably one of the questions people ask me the most because their Azov is media savvy and the criminal's been pretty good about getting them put forward first.

And a lot of my friends are on the political left. And so it's something I hear come up a lot. So I think it's just important to hammer home what their actual place is within the Ukrainian military. They are, one, it's important to point out that they are within the Ukrainian military. This is not some fringe group that sort of operates outside of it. This is with this entity now as it exists. It's firmly woven into the Ukrainian military. And the individuals who are at Azovstahl, some of them were a long time as of regiment fighters.

some of them had long retired and volunteered to come back when the war started. And some of them were just simply Ukrainian men who on February 24th went to their local draft office, said, sign me up for the war and were placed within the Azov regiment as they were placed in many other units within the Ukrainian military. Can we talk a little bit about what conditions were like at Azavstal, start off maybe at the beginning and then just how desperate things got? We're talking about a siege that took place over months. So at the very beginning, it's important to understand that this place was designated as a place of shelter. The executives of Basel Stahl had been preparing these bunkers for years to serve as a shelter for people. And so it was equipped with food, with water. There are

showering stations. There are small kitchens that you could cook at. There was fuel. And so it had, it was provisioned to serve. The general director of the plant told me it was provisioned to serve 11,000 to 12,000 people, which is the entire staff of a plant for about three weeks. What you had there were the numbers that ended up there. You had about 3,000 Ukrainian troops that ended up there, plus about several hundred civilians who ended up there. And very quickly, these provisions began to run out. Water began to run out very quickly. The food had to be rationed after a few weeks to the point where people were adults were only getting about one meal a day, usually thin soup of canned meat and water that was heated over a wood-fired stove.

The electricity went out pretty quickly. They were able to get by with generators for a time, but very quickly the fuel ran out. And in many cases, they were living in the dark. They dry-rigged batteries from cars to power LED lights for light at times. But this became very quickly, very grim, dark, dank place from which to seek shelter from near constant bombardment. The bombardment of Azavstahl began in earnest in the first days and weeks of the war, and it did not let up for more than a few hours until the last soldiers left the plant in late May. Were they fighting along the wall around the plant, or were people just huddled in the bunkers the whole time?

So until about mid-April, there were units of fighters that were able, that were, in fact, leaving the plant and taking the fight to the Russians. It was a very intense, very deadly urban warfare environment in which small units of Russian troops were making these kind of lightning raids into the city to do battle with Russian forces. But they were eventually overwhelmed. And by about April 20th or so, almost all of the units had been pushed back to inside the walls of Azovstahl.

They would come out to repel attempts to storm the factory. there were several attempts by Russian forces to storm it, and none of those until the very end were successful. But after about April 20, 25th or so, there was very little that the troops could do outside in the open. What was so important about the plant? Or was it just that people were stuck there? One, it's not just the plant. It's Maripal. Maryupil is crucially important for a number of reasons.

So it's a very strategic port. It's important for Ukraine. It's a major outlet to the Sea of Azov. For the Kremlin and for Vladimir Putin, it stands in the way of the creation of the so-called land bridge linking Western Russia to Crimea. Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and immediately ran into a problem. All of Crimea's infrastructure, its water, its electricity, its gas was tied to Ukraine. There was no physical linkage of Crimea to Russian territory. And so very quickly, the Ukrainians sought to starve Crimea resources to cut off the water in particular.

And so there had been perennial problems for eight years getting water into Crimea. Russia eventually built a bridge linking mainland Russia to southern Crimea. But that wasn't to keep the entire peninsula supplied with basic utilities. And so it has long been a desire of the Kremlin to create this land bridge, carving out a chunk of Ukrainian territory that would connect the Russian land to Crimea. And Mariupil stands basically as like the as the gateway to that land bridge. So that's why taking the city was so important. And the plant itself was central.

And the plant itself is, it's, I was in plant itself along with another plant, steel plant, were central to the city's economy. Every large chunk of the city worked in steel. The plant fed the economy. There was very little work outside. sort of big, heavy industries. And as of Salced, this mammoth sort of monument to the industry of the area. My next question is, how did people at the plant communicate with the outside world? Or, I mean, at the beginning, they weren't. You write about something called Operation Air Corridor,

and that was crucial to communication and a lot of other things. Correct. Communications were cut off fairly early. I think cell phone service went down about March second. The executives of Azavstahl lost full communication with their people in the plant, I think in March 8th. And there were spotty communications between the fighters in Azavstahl and their commanders outside of it for about for several weeks before this operation air quarter was put in a place. Basically what the Ukrainians decided. Their guys were completely surrounded in this factory. There was no way to resupply them by land. There was no way to resupply than by sea, Russian forces had taken. In addition to Mariupil, controlled about 100 kilometers

of land between Mariupil and Ukrainian-controlled territory in the Zaporizia region. And so they, rather than abandon these troops and or devise an early surrender, they came up with this plan to resupply the plant by helicopter. And this involved flying a military helicopter at incredibly high speeds, incredibly low to the ground, several feet above the ground, through enemy-controlled Russian territory and landing probably one of the hottest combat zones of the war. And just about everybody who was involved in this in the early days thought it was going to be a failure. And it turned out it wasn't. It turned out that the skill of the helicopter pilots, the element of surprise, they were able to get these helicopters through these rings of defenses. In fact,

I talked to several people who were on these flights, they remember seeing shocked Russian soldiers. They're flying just feet over these guys' heads. And because they're flying so low and so fast, these Russian soldiers had no time to react other than to fall to the ground and look for cover. And so these helicopter missions, there were seven in total and two, between two and four helicopters in each mission. And they were able to supply arms and equipment that these troops were desperately in need of to continue to defend themselves. And one of the other things that they supplied that was incredibly crucial was the Starlink, satellite internet system that finally at the beginning of March allowed not just the troops to

communicate not with just their commanders not just with their commanders but with the outside world to communicate with people like me so it's in about mid-April that about early April that I start communicating with people with soldiers who are in as of stall it's thanks to this satellite internet system that they that these helicopters were able to bring in and people really got to get a view of what was going on inside the plant that way. Some of it's pretty graphic. You mentioned that the Azov guys were savvy and they were particularly savvy in this case. They realized, I think, early on, that fighting alone was not going to get them out of this. They needed to attract the world's attention. And so they started sending out these videos of conditions in the plant. Some of them involved trips

they would take to civilian areas. I should point out that the soldiers and the civilians were not in the same areas. Like I said, at the beginning there were 36 bomb shelters. The soldiers were in one part of the plant, civilians were in another part of the plant, and they very rarely saw each other and interacted. The soldiers would occasionally make trips to the civilian section of the plant to bring supplies that they had gathered for the civilians and suites for children and things like that. And after the Starlink system arrived, they also began making videos, interviewing the children who were locked in these bunkers and these touching scenes of children saying they want they just want to see the sun again, they want to see their friends again, they want to see their

families again, these scenes of desperation by these people who were trapped there. And they also began sending videos of what their conditions were like. At one point, what of the deputy commanders of the Azov regiment sent me video and photos of what their hospital area looked like. And it was just a gruesome, gruesome scene of these soldiers with absolutely ghastly injuries, bleeding and leaking and gangrenous injuries were dying because of the lack of basic medicines. And it really started drawing a lot of attention to this plant, these videos. World leaders started getting involved in calling for a solution to be made. The UN General Assembly, the UN Secretary General got involved. The Pope at one point made statements calling for some solution to be found, and so it really

generated a lot of attention. One very quick question. You mentioned that the soldiers and civilians were separate in the plant in two different areas. Did the Russians take that into account when they were on their bombing runs or attacks? It doesn't seem so. The accounts I got of bombing from the civilians matched the accounts of the bombings I got from the from the soldiers. The civilians were also under incredibly intense bombardment. In order to cook, in order to start a fire, they had to go up above ground. And this became incredibly dangerous as bombs began falling closer to their, to their shelters. There were cave-ins at the civilian shelters. Some of these bomb shelters were not meant to sustain or withstand the kind of sustained bombardment that occurred at this factory over the course

of two months and some of them started caving in. It happened on the soldiers side. It happened where the civilians were as well. So it didn't seem that one of the talking points put out, but the Kremlin was that these soldiers were somehow using the civilians as human shields. None of the civilians I interviewed and I interviewed a lot of them had said anything about being forced to stay in the plant against their will. What they did say is that there was no way they could leave because the bombing never stopped. And there were attempts, some had made, some made attempts to leave on several occasions, but were driven back by the, by the intense shelling that they were enduring. How did this end? It ended in phases. The, as I mentioned, the general

secretary of the UN got involved. He flew to Moscow with a proposal first to evacuate the civilians. This was in late April. The Kremlin agreed to this sort of in principle. For days, though, before a green corridor, a green corridor could be open, they engage in some of the heaviest bombardment of the factory that they had to date, so much so that when finally the bombs were silent and the UN arrived to start evacuating civilians, many of the civilians refused to leave because they were so scared to come out thinking that the bombing would start again. And it took some negotiations on behalf by the Ukrainian soldiers to try and get them to come out. And they were evacuated over a period of about three days. They were given a choice, as far as I understand,

of whether to stay, whether to, some were given a choice of whether they wanted to go to Russia, or whether they wanted to go to Ukrainian-held territory. The majority decided to go to Ukrainian-held territory. Some decided to stay in Mariupil to look for loved ones that they had not been in touch with since the beginning of the war. But the vast majority were put on buses and taken to Ukrainian territory, not before going through what is called filtration, where they were interrogated by Russian troops about what they knew about soldiers' locations within the plan. They were checked. Men, in particular, were checked for tattoos, strip search and check for tattoos that might indicate some affiliation with the Ukrainian armed forces. But eventually, most of them made their way

to Ukrainian held territory. And the soldiers were treated a little bit differently, right? They were taken into Russian territory, Russian held territory. With the soldiers, it was trickier. For a long time, it didn't seem as if the Russian forces would ever let them leave. And for many of the Ukrainians, they resisted, they resisted surrender for fear that they could be killed upon their release. After the last civilians were out, the bombing resumed in earnest and just absolutely horrendous bombings that killed them any more soldiers over about two weeks. And finally, a negotiation, a settlement was negotiated whereby the Ukrainian soldiers to leave the plant and hand themselves over to Russian troops and go and basically become prisoners of war.

And this was overseen by the Red Cross as well as representatives to Ukraine, in fact, Ukrainian military intelligence service to ensure that these soldiers receive some minimum levels of care upon their evacuation from the plant. And your story talks about how these soldiers, about 140 were eventually released in some sort of prisoner deal. with Russia. Yeah, so about 2,500 soldiers came out and surrendered. They were taken, most of them were taken to a prison camp in Russian-controlled Eastern Ukraine. The leaders of the commanders of the troops, I'm told, were taken to Moscow, where they're currently being held in Lafortifo prison in Moscow. And Ukrainian officials have vowed to bring the rest of these guys home. They We had their first big prisoner exchange in June, late June, when 144 guys mostly seriously wounded soldiers were exchanged for Russian troops. And as far as I'm told, they're currently negotiating for the next batch of exchanges.

One other thing that really struck me in reading the piece, though, is after the soldiers were taken, they were put on rations that were just enough to keep them above starvation levels. It sounds like it was like war, it really sounds like something in World War II. Yeah, it was interesting. Some of them expressed, I spoke to a few of these who, a few of these guys who were released to this prisoner exchange. And yes, they had plenty of complaints about the food, plenty of complaints about the that inhabited the cells with them, many complaints about the endless interrogation by members of all kinds of different secret services.

A lot of them were relieved to be out of the condition that they were in in Azabwe. of Stahl. The ones I spoke to seem to have gotten not great medical care, but okay medical care. They were no longer dying of their injuries. They were kept alive. And the question is, what happened? It's a lot of soldiers that they are now that are now in Russian custody. And it's really a question about what happens to them, particularly the leaders, who the Russians have held up as, the Russians have portrayed as Nazi villains. I was just wondering, how in the world do you report a story like this? When I was reading it, it really felt you'd been on the ground. And I'm just going to assume that you were not trapped in the bunker.

I was not trapped in the bunkers, thankfully. You know, you report this story, just like you report in any other story, you talk to as many people as possible. I was in Zaporizia when the first busloads of evacuees from Aslostal arrived there and met a bunch of people there that I continued to talk to in the months that followed to build out their stories. I, as I mentioned, began speaking with soldiers in Azadstahl at about mid-April, early mid-April, and just kept those relationships up and continued to build out profiles every time I spoke to them, I learned something new to the point where I could start to feel like I understood what was happening there. Obviously, you can't understand what was happening there, but I developed a good enough relationship with a lot of these people to where they were telling me in great detail

about what they were experiencing and how they were seeing it. And the videos that they took help, they were releasing videos publicly. They were sending videos to me that they were taking on their own and helped from the Ukrainian military who provided me details about these helicopter flights. Provided video from these helicopter flights that they had taken. And so all these little pieces, we just, and I was just, I was the only reporter on this. I had half a dozen colleagues who had also done interviews with other people who were involved in some way in this story. and from all of these little strands whooped together, a story.

Well, I really think that people should take the time to read it, even if you've been listening to this conversation. And there's also lots of videos, maps, all sorts of cool stuff in the presentation. I'm much more articulate as a writer than I am as a speaker. You've written recently about the counteroffensive,

and I'm wondering where you see the war going in the next few months and how you think that counteroffensive is shaping up. Not asking you to make predictions, because I know that it can be a dicey game, especially with war, but what do you see? It's very hard to, it's very hard to determine at this point. It really does feel like we're at this inflection point in the war, and it could go in any, it could go in any direction.

It was just a few weeks ago where it seemed like Russia had the upper hand and was in full control of the situation in the East and that things were looking really dire for the Ukrainians. Now the Russian effort in the East has slowed, possibly for a reason. regrouping possibly for preparations for a renewed offensive in Kharkiv and in the Donbass region around Kramathehrs and Slavian. We're waiting for that. And meanwhile, down south, where I am, the Ukrainians have begun the first waves in what they say is a counteroffensive to retake the Herzone region. This is the first full region and the first major city, Herson, was the first to fall to the Russians in early weeks of the war in early March. And the Ukrainians are really dead set on getting it back.

They have launched a number of pretty devastating strikes using their new Hymar systems and other weapon systems provided by the West on forward operating command and control bases and forward weapons and ammunition depots that have forced the Russians to scramble and rejiggered their logistical systems that have thrown them onto a back foot and whether the Ukrainians can then use that momentum to begin a large counterattack. that that could rest this territory away from Russia is still yet to be seen. Michael Schwartz, thank you so much for joining us today and taking us through, I think, one of the most compelling stories of the war so far. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me. That's all for this week. Angry Planet listeners, as always, Angry Planet is me, Matthew Galt, Jason Fields, and Kevin Nodell. If you like us, please go to Angry Planetpod.com and kick us $9 a month. It's again at Angryplantpod.com or AngryPlanent.com.

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