Late last month, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu announced that Mariupol had been liberated from Ukrainian forces, and that order can now be restored in the city. Shoigu, however, stressed that the “remaining radicals” were still under siege at the Azovstal steel plant.
French independent journalist Anne-Laure Bonnel has presented eyewitness accounts of the crimes of neo-Nazis from the Azov Battalion in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol at an informal UN Security Council meeting.
Bonnel, in particular, showed a video of an interview with an unnamed male resident of Mariupol, in which he explained that he had managed to flee the city by secretly making his way along the coast of the Sea of Azov.
According to him, Azov Battalion members “occupy residential houses, beat people and don’t let them leave their homes”.