The Daily - The Battle for Azovstal: A Soldier’s Story

Episode Date: May 18, 2022

For the past two months, a group of Ukrainian fighters has been holed up in the Azovstal steel plant in the city of Mariupol, mounting a last stand against Russian forces in a critical part of eastern Ukraine.On Monday, Ukraine finally surrendered the plant.After the end of the determined resistance at Azovstal, we hear from Leonid Kuznetsov, a 25 year-old soldier who had been stationed inside.Guest: Michael Schwirtz, an investigative reporter for The New York Times.Want more from The Daily? For one big idea on the news each week from our team, subscribe to our newsletter. Background reading: Hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers who fought at the steel plant in Mariupol face an uncertain future in Russian custody.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. 

From The New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernisi. This is The Daily. For the past two months, a group of Ukrainian fighters has been holed up in a steel plant in the strategic city of Mariupol, the last stand against Russian forces in a critical part of Ukraine's east. On Monday, Ukraine surrendered, leaving the soldiers' fate uncertain. Today, my colleague Michael Schwartz on the story of one of those soldiers and on how a rare Russian victory has already become a rallying cry for resistance in Ukraine.

It's Wednesday, May 18th. So, Mike, where does this story begin for you? Well, I'd been in Ukraine covering this war for about three months. And at the beginning of the fighting, it became clear that one of the areas that Russia was most interested in was Mariupol. This is a seaside port city that is incredibly important for Russia strategically. It is the window through which Russia can connect Russian territory to the Crimean Peninsula, this patch of land sticking off the end of Ukraine that Russia annexed in 2014. Right.

I mean, the Russians have been pretty successful in Mariupol. We've talked before on the show about them taking over larger and larger parts of the city and that it was, in fact, pretty much just leveled. Yeah, I guess it depends on how you define success. Militarily, yes, they've been able to seize control of the city, but that's come at the cost of the destruction of perhaps 90% of the buildings. And as they moved through the city, decimating it, people were pushed to the sea. And the place that they sought refuge primarily was this steel plant, the Azovstal steel plant, which became this last bastion of resistance for Ukrainian fighters.

And so about a month ago, I started to try and piece together as much as I could about what life was like inside this plant. You know, how on earth were these people living and keeping the entire might of the Russian military, which had completely taken over this city at bay. It's kind of like the Ukrainian Alamo. Yeah. It just seemed to me to be an extraordinary story and an interesting window through which to view the broader war. So, Mike, tell me about this plant. It's helpful to imagine it more like it's a city within a city. It's a massive territory, about four square miles with multiple buildings.

When you look at it from the outside, it looks like a city from some kind of dystopian future. There's massive smokestacks, twisted metal and moving parts and railways running through it all. No trees or sort of natural life to speak of. And when you get inside of it, it was built to be a self-contained place where workers had everything they needed. There are places to sleep, there are places to eat. And there are, and this is important in the context of the Cold War when this plant was largely built, there are these nuclear-capable bunkers. And so there are soldiers down there, but there are also all of these civilians, steel factory workers primarily, who have brought their families and their friends to seek refuge in the place that they think is the safest. But they're all spread out all throughout this complex. There are, you know, 40 people maybe in one bunker and 50 people, you know, miles away in another bunker.

So they may not even see one another. And Mike, do we know how many people approximately were down there at any given time? It's not entirely clear. I've heard different estimates, you know, in the thousands, including soldiers and civilians. So, Mike, who are these soldiers inside? There's a real hodgepodge in there. You have regular patrol police, you have Marines, infantry, and you have the National Guard. And within the National Guard, you have this group of fighters called the Azov Battalion. And they have come to really dominate the fighting in there. They're probably the largest group of fighters in there. And this group has a very complicated history going back to 2014 when Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula and instigated a separatist war in eastern Ukraine that in many ways was the introduction to this war that the Russian forces are fighting now in Ukraine. battalion arose at this time, kind of as a volunteer group of guys who were upset and angry

about what Russia was doing in the east of Ukraine. They were not permitted to enter the army for various reasons. The founder of the Azov battalion was a convicted criminal who got out of jail and founded this group basically as a battalion of misfits. Anybody who wanted to could join. as a battalion of misfits. Anybody who wanted to could join. And if you held unsavory political views, you could join. And very quickly,

the Azov battalion became associated with a band of far-right nationalists bordering on fascists. And it has had trouble shaking this reputation even as the group has evolved and become more of a regular part of the Ukrainian military and the Ukrainian National Guard. And this reputation is important because the fact that perhaps a small contingent of people fighting in this battalion held these unsavory views has been used by Putin and the Kremlin to paint the entire Ukrainian nation, the entire Ukrainian government

as a fascist neo-Nazi operation that needs to be cleansed, that needs to be defeated, that needs to be run out of Ukraine. And the nugget of truth in the Kremlin's narrative for this war is this association that the Azov Battalion had in its infancy. Mike, are these fighters from the Azov Battalion still these far-right guys? I mean, what's the current situation? The Azov Battalion is part of the regular Ukrainian military. It has to adhere to the rules of the chain of command. And the individuals fighting in the plant at this time. Some of them have been with the Azov battalion for years. Others are new soldiers who were living civilian

lives on February 24th, went and volunteered to join the military when the Russians invade and were assigned to the Azov battalion to fight. Okay, so Mike, you've described this plant, which is basically kind of a little island of Ukrainians that are still fighting and still surviving. But how do you go about reporting on it? I mean, you obviously can't go there. So what do you do? Right, that was the biggest challenge in reporting on just the siege of Mariupol in general is that we could not get there. It was so quickly taken over by the Russians. And so I started calling around to military sources that I have, asking for contacts of people who may be fighting in the steel plant.

And eventually I was able to connect with a young soldier named Leonid Kuznetsov. So, Mike, tell me about Leonid. Who is he and what's his story? He's 25 years old. He's a member of the National Guard that is not with the Azov Battalion. And he had been posted to various places around the city in the early weeks of the war, but eventually found himself at the Azovstal plant. And he's been there ever since.

And what did you hear from Leonid about what it was like for him inside the plant? We communicated over text primarily because the internet service was so spotty. And the first thing that he messaged me was, hello, I'm alive and healthy so far. The situation is very tough. We're on our last food and water. And he described a very grim situation. He spent most of his time underground in the dark in these bunkers under a relentless and terrifying bombing campaign by the Russians that could be heard, that could be seen in many cases as the Russian bombs chipped away at the concrete overhead that was protecting them. He described cave-ins that have crushed people and buried people alive. And they're witnessing this, you know, helplessly. You know, they don't

have, they have weapons, they have some ammunition, they don't have the kind of weapons that they could use to fight against Russian airstrikes, Russian artillery strikes, attacks from the sea. Russia has this place surrounded and is just pummeling it into the dirt. and is just pummeling it into the dirt. And in order to find food, in order to find water, in order to fight, they have to leave the safety of these shelters amid this relentless bombing campaign and go out onto the grounds of the factory and forage, essentially, for their survival before racing back into their shelters. essentially for their survival before racing back into their shelters.

You're describing these unbelievably wrenching circumstances this guy is in. What does he say about how he's feeling? I mean, what does he think about all of this? When I asked him if he was afraid, he texted back, everyone's afraid from time to time. My feelings are within the bounds of normal. And when I asked him about, you know, what his plan was, what the soldiers with him, what they wanted to do to get out, he told me, quite frankly, he said, you know, we're hoping for help. He says, without it, we will not be able to leave the factory. We will die here with our weapons in our hands defending Ukraine. There are no other options. And after that text, the messages essentially stop. on the outside of the plant, anybody, any of his family or friends that I could talk to, to find out more about what he might be going through and more about his life. And he immediately suggested that I reach out to his wife, Maria.

Hello? Hello, Maria. This is Michael. Yes, hello. Hello. How are you? What was it like talking to her? She answers with this achingly sad voice. And I ask her how she's doing. She responds, it's hard to answer right now. And she asked me, do you know about my husband? He's in Mariupol.

And I asked whether she'd heard from him today, that day that I called. She said, no, nothing. And then she proceeds to tell me their story. She starts off by saying that they met in college. He's two years older. They both grew up in Mariupol and they went to the same university. She was studying physical therapy. But their first meeting didn't actually take place until they both happened to be attending a comedy

show where a very famous comedian by the name of Volodymyr Zelensky was performing in Mariupol. This is now the president of the country. And as Maria put it, the two of them like to joke that the president of Ukraine is responsible

for their getting together. Wow. So then what happened after they met and started spending time together? She says that she fell for him. She said that, you know, as they started spending time together, she came to realize that in her words,

this is my person. And they fell in love, they got married, and they started a life together. They graduated college. Leonid joined the military right after he graduated. David, right? They had a baby named David. And they started to take the next steps in planning out their lives. After three years in the military,

Leonid decided it was time to move on, and so he started preparing paperwork for a career in law enforcement and retired from the military in December 2021. In other words, two months before the war. Right. And what you have to remember that two months before the start of the war, it was inconceivable for Ukrainians that Russia could launch a major invasion, even though officials in the U.S. and

elsewhere had started talking about this possibility. And so he went back to his old National Guard unit, not the Azov Battalion, and signed up to fight for his country. And what did Maria think about that? She was opposed. And she said that she tried to convince him not to do it. She pleaded with him, even. And for a time, he relented and allowed her to say her

peace and to try and convince him. But then one day, he put his foot down and made a decision. He gathered his things and left the house and went off to fight the war. You know, Maria told me this story that I think really reveals starkly what Russia's intentions are for Ukraine. She herself lived through the first month or so of the war in Mariupol and then was able to escape. And she talks about getting to a Russian checkpoint and seeing a Russian soldier there. And she recalled asking him which direction Ukraine was in because she wanted to resettle in Ukrainian controlled territory.

And this soldier took one look at her and her child and said, we will exterminate everyone there. Go to Russia. We'll be right back. So, Mike, now that Leonid is in the steel plant, and seeing how dire things are around him, has he ever voiced any regret that he re-enlisted? Maria says that he never once voiced any regret. He went there to protect his family and his country, and that's what he's doing.

He told her that she needs to be prepared for any outcome, by which he meant that she needs to prepare herself for the possibility that he won't return. to prepare herself for the possibility that he won't return. But he also told her that the one thing that he didn't expect, the one thing he wasn't prepared for, was a feeling that he had been abandoned, he and his fellow soldiers. He feels that they have been left simply to the mercy of the Russians,

that the Ukrainian government hasn't done enough to save them. But wait, Mike, is that true? I mean, did Ukraine's government abandon them? The reality is they're stuck in there. The plant is fully surrounded by Russian forces. Russian forces control the city. Russian forces control miles and miles of territory outside of Mariupol. To fight their way out is impossible. And so in order for the Ukrainian government militarily to try and rescue these soldiers, it would require a colossal amount of troops and forces to plunge into now Russian-controlled territory, fight their way into this plant, and get them out.

It's just militarily unrealistic at this point. Mm-hmm. But far from the battle lines, there appeared to be some pretty concerted negotiations underway with Russia to evacuate people from the plant. And at the beginning of May, we learn that Ukraine and Russia have negotiated a ceasefire that is going to allow the civilians that are still trapped inside this plant to get out. Hmm.

Around this time, I get a voice message from Leonid. This is the first time that I've actually heard his voice. And he sounds, you know, just exhausted, but, you know, very pointed, and matter of fact. He says, last week we did not go outside and delight at all. And that there's been constant massive shelling. He says we were dealing with the search for food ourselves and the search for water,

because water is that source that no one just gives you. Because water is a resource that you won't be given anywhere. After I hear from him, the situation only becomes more dire. The field hospital that soldiers have been using at one point collapsed underneath the bombing campaign, and a number of people are crushed underneath it, and that renders it unusable. And the wounded don't even have rudimentary medicine. They don't have bandages. There's no anesthesia to conduct surgeries, And people are just dying from wounds that normally would be easily treatable. And what's more, Russian forces were able to break into the territory of the plant.

So you're starting to have intense fighting, not only from the air and from the sea and from the artillery bombardment, we were actually having soldiers enter into the territory of the plant that these Ukrainian defenders have to fight against. Oh, wow. And so this refuge for these soldiers becomes smaller and smaller. And this goes on for several weeks until Monday. And what happened on Monday? We start hearing what to me is kind of unbelievable news that somehow the Ukrainian government had been able to negotiate with the Russians and reach

an agreement to evacuate at least some of the soldiers who were at this steel plant, starting with the most severely wounded. steel plants, starting with the most severely wounded. And that evening, Zelensky releases a video confirming that an operation is underway to, in his words, save the lives of our guys. He says, I want to emphasize, Ukraine needs Ukrainian heroes alive. This work requires delicacy and time. As of now, we're told about 260 soldiers were evacuated from the plant. And this includes 53 of the soldiers

who are the most critically wounded. And we were able to see video of this evacuation, in fact. You saw Russian soldiers conducting pat-downs of some of these Ukrainians who had come out, checking them presumably for weapons. Others are brought out on stretchers. Some with what appear to be particularly grievous injuries. You see military medics attending to them, wrapping wounds in gauze.

And then you're seeing them loaded onto these buses where some soldiers are seated in seats, others are on these stretchers. And they're taken away, we're told, to hospitals in what is now Russian-controlled territory. And what we're told by Ukrainian officials is that eventually these individuals will be traded for Russian prisoners of war held by Ukraine and that these 260 will eventually make it back to Ukrainian-held territory. What about Leonid? What's his situation? Do you know anything about him?

We just don't know. We don't know if he was one of the injured who was able to get out. There are still, as far as we understand, hundreds of troops still left in the plant. And what their fate is going to be, we don't know. I received a message from Maria, his wife, this morning. And she doesn't know anything. She hasn't heard from him. But what we do know is that, you know, these guys aren't out of the woods yet. The ones that were able to escape the plant,

they're on Russian-controlled territory. And while the Ukrainian government says that they hope that these guys will be traded for Russian POWs and brought back to Ukrainian territory. We know that throughout this process, Russia has continuously negotiated in bad faith. Already, we're starting to hear voices inside. Russia called for trials, called for a declaration of the Azov battalion and any of its fighters to be considered terrorists. And so we just don't know what is going to happen to these guys ultimately. Yeah, it doesn't bode well for Leonid. Not at the moment. Mike, what will it look like in the history books? I mean, what will Mariupol be as a chapter? How

will we remember it? It's complicated because on the one hand, despite all we've said about the challenges the Russian military has faced since the beginning of the war, they've accomplished quite a bit. They have expanded Russian-controlled territory in the Donbass from 40 percent, which they had control over at the start of the war, to about 80 percent, and in some estimates, 90 percent of the Donbass. With this negotiated exit of soldiers and a cessation of hostilities in Mariupol, Putin has basically achieved this bridge of land connecting Russian territory to Crimea. So in that sense, there are some real gains for Russia here. But if you look at this from the Ukrainian perspective, you know, far from being this nest of Nazism that the Kremlin has described it, Mariupol has really become a symbol.

And this steel plant in particular and the defenders inside of it have become this symbol of Ukrainian resistance that I think is going to be a defining feature of this war. Up and down the line, you have these examples of Ukrainian soldiers beating incredible odds to put up a defense against an overwhelmingly superior Russian military. You had what was whittled down to be a group of hungry, thirsty soldiers who had not had a rest in two months, who were out of ammunition, who were out of water, fight the vastly superior Russian military to a draw. Yeah. This was a negotiated settlement. This was not a defeat that Putin wanted. Putin didn't go into the Azov steel plant and raise the Russian flag. In fact,

there were videos circulating just a week ago of the Ukrainian flag still flying over the Azov steel plant. Wow. And so this doesn't play into Putin's narrative about what Ukraine is and what Ukrainians are at all. That's the chapter in the history book. Mariupol and the steel plant is Ukrainian resistance. In Ukrainian resilience. As of right now, that's the story of the war. Mike, thank you.

Thanks for having me. On Wednesday, Russia's defense ministry said that more Ukrainian soldiers from the plant had surrendered, bringing the total number in Russian custody to 959. Meanwhile, in Russia, officials seem to be preparing for a trial of the captured soldiers. The Speaker of Russia's lower house of parliament said lawmakers would soon discuss the ban of, quote, exchanges of Nazi criminals. And a court hearing was set for May 26th to legally designate the Azov Battalion,

a, quote, terrorist organization. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. White supremacy is a poison. It's a poison. It really is. Running through our body politic. On Tuesday, President Biden traveled to the site of the racist mass shooting that killed 10 people in Buffalo, New York, and called on Americans to reject a strain of white supremacy that he said has become dangerously mainstream in American life.

It's been allowed to fester and grow right in front of our eyes. No more. I mean, no more. We need to say as clearly and forcefully as we can that the ideology of white supremacy has no place in America. None. In his speech, Biden took direct aim at the conspiracy theory that animated the Buffalo shooter and has appeared in various forms across conservative media and Republican politics. It claims that elites are seeking to replace white Americans with people of color. Biden called the theory a lie. I call on all Americans to reject the lie. And I condemn those who spread the lie for power, political gain, and for profit. That's what it is.

And in a series of closely watched primaries, the beleaguered congressman Madison Cawthorn was defeated in a Republican race for Congress in North Carolina. And the battle between Dr. Mehmet Oz and his rival, Dave McCormick, in the Republican race for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, was still too close to call. Both races were seen as the latest test of Donald Trump's power since leaving office. He endorsed both Oz and Cawthorn. sourced both Oz and Cawthorn.

Today's episode was produced by Claire Tedeschetter, Ricky Nowetzki, Asla Chaturvedi, and Nina Feldman, with help from Chelsea Daniel. It was edited by Liz O'Balin, with help from Michael Benoit. Contains original music by Dan Powell, Rochelle Banja, Marian Lozano, and Elisabeth Etube. And was engineered by Chris Wood. Special thanks to Victor Kowalkow. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Lansberg of Wonderland.

That's it for The Daily. I'm Sabrina Tavernisi. See you tomorrow.