Resistance in Mariupol: a steel battle between blast furnaces and tunnels of the Soviet era

Broooooommmmm. The right hit and the shocking noise. Soooooooo mmmm. This time, what should have been the scene of a profound devastation remains only in that, in the outburst and fear that makes one's head down instinctively as if the only thing that is in danger is that, the head. The steel plates prevented the disaster. There wasn't even a devastating fire. The missile fell and instead of penetrating, it slipped. It exploded without being able to do the damage it would have done to any other structure, in one of the many buildings like the ones left with a hole where the fifth C and A or B and D used to be, the lobby, the staircase, the elevator and the exit to the terrace. Everything disappears in one blow with one of those missiles launched by the Russians' S300 battery. This time, in Azovstal, the largest steel mill in Eastern Europe, it was just a threat. There is no missile that penetrates so many layers of steel.

In this historical network of buildings, blast furnaces, hoppers, pipes, railway tracks and docks, Ukrainian resistance was walled against the assault by blood and fire by the Russians who had to destroy the city of Mariupol to stay with it but who could not break what has been its symbol of work and progress. This 11-square-kilometer property is where the defenders retreated after almost a month and a half of mansalva bombardments. They held out much longer than was reasonable. Until they took refuge in the metallurgical plant and posed a guerrilla war hidden among impenetrable structures.

A commander of the Pro-Russian separatists described the place as “a fortress in a city, a medieval wall”. He knows it very well. With his troops and the military support of Moscow, he tried several times to storm the steel mill since 2014. They say that below the plant are tunnels where Ukrainians can move without being seen. The “Azovites”, as they call those in Mariupol because they are on the shores of the Sea of Azov, talk about the catacombs in the center of the city that are supposedly connected with those of the factory. They say that there are several entrances: “right on Nielsen Street, on the neighboring Kuindzhi Street and in the Garden City”. “The “Azovites”, who had been preparing the city for defense for eight years, simply could not ignore the catacombs,” one of the neighbors explained to a Russian correspondent accompanying the occupying forces.

Azovstal has a long history related to the industrialization of the Soviet Union. It was created in 1930 by decision of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the National Economy of the USSR and entered the production line in 1933 when its blast furnace took out the first iron sheet. In January 1935, the first steel bars came out when the 250-ton tilting kiln began to operate, a significant technological advance for the time. Six years later, with the Nazi occupation, the plant was deactivated and despite the efforts of the Germans to re-ignite the ovens, they were unable to do so. Only in September 1943, when the Red Army regained control of Mariupol, did reconstruction begin. With the fall of the Soviet Union, the plant returned to very low levels of production and emissions from its furnaces caused terrible pollution throughout the region.

When privatized in 2005, the plant produced 5.906 million tons of steel a year, an absolute record and a huge success for Ukraine independent of Moscow's power. Azovstal Iron and Steel Works is an integrated company, subsidiary of Italian company Metinvest. Until the Russian invasion, it produced rolled profiles and sheet metal semi-finished products used in shipbuilding, electrical engineering, bridge construction and the production of large-diameter pipes for gas and oil pipelines. It is also the largest manufacturer of railway rails in Eastern Europe. Sell to everyone. The owner of this plant and the entire holding company is Rinat Akhmetov, the richest man in Ukraine.

The 11 square kilometres of the steel plant are still disputed between the occupying forces and the defence, even though on Wednesday the Russian Ministry of Defence assured that more than 1,000 soldiers of the 36th Marine Brigade of Ukraine, including 162 officers, had surrendered there.

The Ukrainian presidential adviser, Oleksiy Arestovych, assured that these marines had managed to break through a “very risky move” to join the Azov Regiment, which continued to resist in another sector of the steel mill. And here appears the ghost of this force that originated as a battalion of ultra-nationalists who fought against pro-Russian separatists since 2014 in Donetsk and Luhansk. It is from this element that Vladimir Putin takes when he claims that his “special operation” in Ukraine is aimed at “denazifying” the country.

The Azov Battalion has its origins in the 2014 conflict, founded by a “group of young racists” members of other far-right ideology conglomerates and football hooligans (barras bravas) whose beginnings fall within the voluntary paramilitary groups created during the Maidan Revolution, the uprising popular for Ukraine to join the European Union. The best known leader of the Azovs is Andriy Biletsky who launched concepts like this: “We have to lead the white races of the rest of the world in a final crusade... against the lower races (Untermenschen) led by the Semites.” Biletsky left the Azov Battalion, ran for election with a far-right party and won less than 1% of the votes in the last elections.

“But the Azov Battalion no longer exists. It is now another regiment in the Ukrainian Army,” Anton Shekhovtsov, director of the Center for Democratic Integrity in Austria and expert in studies of the European extreme right, explained to the site to Newtral.es. “The depoliticization process was not overnight, it took years. And it was largely achieved.” The Azovs had already become popular defending Mariupol in 2014 with enormous discipline and organization. He was joined by other nationalist fighters but far from Nazism and the government integrated them into the National Guard under the name of the Azov Regiment.

According to Andreas Umland, an analyst at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs, it would be a mistake to focus the debate on whether or not there is an ultra-right ideology among some members of the Azov regiment, which is just what Putin argues. “While there is no denying that Azov has a complicated history, its origins are neo-Nazis, Russia is exaggerating the problem to use it to its advantage. It gives Putin the excuse he needed to justify the unjustifiable,” he says.

Although there is another element that spice up even more this history of the steel plant and the resistance. The assault on Miriupol, and particularly Azovstal, involves the regiment of Chechens led Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of that Russian republic with a majority Muslim population. The “Kadýrovtsy” are known for their brutality in battle. They cut off the heads and genitals of their enemies and practice highly effective torture techniques. Kadyrov is a protégé of Putin and has shown himself several times in recent days on social media giving orders to his men on the outskirts of Mariupol.

There is a contained anger between these two groups that surpasses the conflict and even the thick steel sheets of Azovstal. In a video shared at the end of February 2022 by the official account of the Ukrainian National Guard, it shows soldiers of the Azov regiment rubbing their bullets in pork fat before confronting groups of the Russian army of Muslim origin, which they called “the orcs of Kadyrov”. The “Kadýrovtsy” responded with images beating Ukrainians taken prisoner with their naked torsos showing tattoos of swastikas and other Nazi symbols. In the video, some of the hostages overprinted the image of Hitler's face.

These militiamen are still lurking between the kilns of the steel plant and the tunnels that some say cover up to 20 kilometers below a huge layer of rails, sheet metal sheets and pipeline tubes. Frustrated, the Russians continue to launch missiles. Brooooommmmm, they stick against the veneers. Graaaaaammmtttoooommm, the Ukrainians feel that they resist 30 meters underground and from time to time they go out to shoot with their bullets smeared with swine fat.

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