Recently, a video with ukrainian civilians calling for help was widely circulated on the Internet, causing great concern from the outside world.
The video, first released on April 21, shows a number of civilians trapped in the last Ukrainian stronghold, the Azov Steel Plant, who said they had run out of food and drinking water in their basements after days of Russian siege, and hoped that governments would lend a helping hand to evacuate them to other safe areas controlled by the Ukrainian government.
In the video, a trapped woman claims that she has been in the basement for 50 days since February 25, the second day putin ordered the Russian army to attack Ukraine, and that the food she brought was almost finished, and people were "on the verge of starvation" and could not even feed their children. She also mentioned that there are many elderly people and children in need of medical attention in the basement, including 15 minors, both infants and teenagers, whose physical strength and lives are rapidly draining; due to daily shelling, people feel scared when they go to the toilet.
The videographer then turned the camera on several minors, one of whom said he had been living in the basement for several weeks and now very much wanted to see the sun again and breathe in the fresh air outside.
Notably, the distress video was posted by a social account controlled by the Neo-Nazi Ukrainian group Camp Azov. Therefore, it is suspected that the Azov battalion may be using civilians to play the "sympathy card" in an attempt to escape the encirclement through humanitarian corridors.
In fact, this possibility does exist. Previously, the Russian army had issued an ultimatum to the Ukrainian troops trapped in the Azov steel plant, demanding that they surrender before 11:00 a.m. on the 20th, otherwise a general offensive would be launched. But the next day, Russian President Vladimir Putin suddenly stopped the attack, saying that there was no need to sacrifice troops to gnaw on this steel fortress, just to trap it to death, "so that a fly can not fly out."
Putin's intention is to take the Azov steel plant without bloodshed by cutting off grain, and at the same time use the remaining Ukrainian army in the factory area as a bargaining chip to bargain with Western countries.
On the same day that Putin announced that he would "surround and not fight", the Azov battalion also released this rescue video very "coincidentally", and it is difficult to say that there is no connection between the two.
There is a view that the real amount of grain stored in the Aeszov steel plant is not at all as long as the Azov camp leader said. At present, there may be only a few short weeks left before the Day when the Ukrainian army will run out of food.
For example, after Putin ordered an order to stop the attack, the Azov battalion trapped in the steel mills held a brief revelry, but the food distributed to the soldiers was only rudimentary scones and noodle soup. Given that soldiers need physical strength to fight, civilians will certainly only receive less food.
In this context, continuing to hold civilians hostage in the basement will certainly allow the Russian army to throw rat traps, but it will also speed up the rate of food consumption.
Therefore, the Azov battalion borrowed the mouth of civilians to convey to the outside world that it wanted to send some civilians away. This will not only reduce food consumption, but may also allow the wounded or some "big fish" to mix with civilians and flee for their lives. If the Russian army, under the pressure of international public opinion, allows the humanitarian passage to pass in both directions, then external assistance can also reach the Aeszov steel plant, so that the Azov battalion armed forces can obtain the material conditions for continued resistance.
For now, it is unknown whether civilians trapped at the Azov steel plant will be safely evacuated, mainly because of mutual distrust between Russia and Ukraine.
During the Second Chechen War in 2000 and the East Ukrainian War in 2015, the Russian army had a very bad precedent, that is, it promised to let the city defenders evacuate harmlessly and guarantee that they would not attack each other, but when the defenders really left the city, the Russian artillery immediately roared and annihilated them. After such a thing happened twice in a row, the Ukrainian army naturally did not dare to believe the Russian army's persuasion to surrender, and on the grounds of security, it did not allow civilians to leave the humanitarian passage.
However, in the eyes of the Russian side, the Ukrainian army always likes to pretend to be civilians to flee from the security corridor, and in the case of difficult to identify and intercept, it can only give fire warnings, or even direct attacks. As a result, this has made the Despicable practice of the Ukrainian army holding civilians hostage, which has a little "rationality".
In short, since the russian and Ukrainian armies have now played a real fire, unless the upper echelons of the two countries reach an agreement, it is almost impossible for Ukrainian civilians to leave safely. To this end, the Ukrainian side has proposed to hold negotiations with the Russian side near the Azov steel plant, and has also expressed its willingness to exchange all Russian prisoners for the Ukrainian defenders in Mariupol. Until now, however, the Russian side has not responded.
Some analysts pointed out that Mariupol is the base camp of the Ukrainian Nazi organization, which has a strong symbolic significance, putin's ultimate goal must be to capture or eliminate all the defenders, there is no possibility of "letting the tiger return to the mountain", especially in the context of more than 50 days of bloody war, this can not be explained to the front line soldiers. From this perspective, the prospect of trapped civilians at the Azov steel plant is expected to be very unoptimistic. (Text/Nanyang Hero)