Destroyed houses near the Azovstal plant in Mariupol. Archival photoDONETSK, April 16There is an underground city under the Azovstal plant in Mariupol, and some buildings of the enterprise are designed for a nuclear strike, all this makes it difficult to storm it, adviser to the head of the DPR government Yan Gagin told RIA Novosti.
"Azovstal" — this is a huge building, a huge Soviet-built plant, its area can be compared with another city, with another Mariupol, with its own communications, with roads and dungeons. That is, the facility itself was built back in Soviet times, taking into account the possibilities, including bombing, and blockades, and even some structures are designed for a nuclear strike", he said.
Gagin added that «the assault on this facility is seriously hampered by the presence of underground communications that connect it with other similar facilities in Mariupol — there is another city under the city, practically.» weapons and a large number of ammunition. They have a rather serious fleet of armored vehicles on the territory of the plant.The Investigative Committee will analyze information about those killed in Mariupol before the departure of «Azov» «Therefore, the operation is going quite slowly, at first glance, but, on the other hand, we must understand that we cannot risk manpower, people. Therefore, artillery duels are constantly taking place on the territory of the enterprises. And in any case, the enemy will be defeated,» Gagin emphasized. At the same time, the adviser expressed confidence that the Ukrainian security forces would not be able to break into Mariupol to release the nationalists. According to him, for this the nearest military grouping will have to cover a distance of about 100 kilometers.
«These almost 100 kilometers are fields, these are steppes with short forests, this is an open area, and attempts to unlock them by a breakthrough is an insanely bold decision. Naturally, on the march, such forces are quite easy to defeat in such an open area. Especially since the sky now in the hands of Russian aviation,” Gagin explained. When the DPR was proclaimed in 2014, Mariupol, with a population of about 450,000 people, was the second largest city in the republic after Donetsk. However, in June of the same year, the Ukrainian security forces regained control over it. On March 7, 2022, the deputy commander of the Vostok battalion of the DPR, Alexander Semenov, said that the city was surrounded, and a cleansing of certain areas began. Among other Ukrainian units, resistance is being offered by the nationalist Azov regiment, against whose militants a criminal case has been initiated in Russia. On February 24, Russia launched a military operation to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine. Vladimir Putin called its goal «the protection of people who have been subjected to bullying and genocide by the Kiev regime for eight years.» According to the Ministry of Defense, the Armed Forces strike only at the military infrastructure and Ukrainian troops and have already completed the main tasks of the first stage — they have significantly reduced the combat potential of Ukraine. The main goal of the operation in the Russian military department was called the liberation of Donbass.