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Russia claimed to have captured Mariupol on Friday in what would be its biggest victory yet in its war in Ukraine. The announcement came following a nearly three-month siege that reduced much of the strategic port city to a smoking ruin, with over 20,000 civilians feared dead.

There was no immediate confirmation from Ukraine.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu reported to President Vladimir Putin the “complete liberation” of the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol – the last stronghold of Ukrainian resistance – and the city as a whole, spokesman Igor Konashenkov said.

Russia’s state news agency RIA Novosti quoted the ministry as saying that a total of 2,439 Ukrainian fighters who had been holed up at Azovstal had laid down their arms and surrendered since Monday, including over 500 on Friday.

The steelworks had been the site of fierce fighting for weeks. The dwindling group of outgunned fighters had held out in the plant, drawing Russian airstrikes, artillery and tank fire before their government ordered them to abandon its defense and save their lives.

Wives of fighters who held out at the steelworks spoke emotionally about what may have been their last contact with their husbands.

Olga Boiko, wife of a marine, wiped away tears as she said that her husband had written her on Thursday: “Hello. We surrender, I don’t know when I will get in touch with you and if I will at all. Love you. Kiss you. Bye.”

Natalia Zaritskaya, wife of another fighter at Azovstal, said that based on the messages she had seen over the past two days, “Now they are on the path from hell to hell. Every inch of this path is deadly.”

She said that two days ago, her husband reported that of the 32 soldiers with whom he had served, only eight survived, most of them seriously wounded.

The complete takeover of Mariupol gives Putin a badly needed military victory in the war he began on Feb. 24 – a conflict that was supposed to have been a quick and easy victory for the Kremlin but instead has seen the failure to take the capital of Kyiv, a pullback of its forces to refocus on battles in eastern Ukraine and even the sinking of Russia’s flagship of its Black Sea fleet, the Moskva.

Military analysts say the city’s capture at this point holds more symbolic importance than anything else, since Mariupol is already effectively under Moscow’s control and most of the Russian forces that were tied down by the drawn-out fighting have already left.

Russia had sought control of Mariupol, on the coast of the Sea of Azov, to complete a land corridor to the Crimean Peninsula, which it annexed from Ukraine in 2014, and free up troops to join the growing battle for control of the wider industrial Donbas region, home to an 8-year-old Moscow-backed separatist rebellion. It would also deprive Ukraine of a vital port.

The city endured some of the worst suffering of the war. An estimated 100,000 people remained from a prewar population of 450,000, many trapped without food, water, heat or electricity. Constant bombardment has left behind shattered and charred buildings in row after row of destroyed apartment blocks and ruined neighborhoods.

A maternity hospital was hit with a lethal Russian airstrike on March 9, producing searing images of pregnant women being evacuated from the facility.

A week later, about 300 people were reported killed in a bombing of a theater where civilians were taking shelter, although the real death toll could be closer to 600. Officials had written the word “CHILDREN” in Russian on the pavement outside to try to forestall an aerial attack.

Long traffic jams of cars snaked out of the city, filled with evacuees fleeing past checkpoints of Russian soldiers with heavy weapons who didn’t have time to search inside each vehicle in the convoys.

Satellite images in April showed what appeared to be mass graves near Mariupol, where local officials accused Russia of concealing the slaughter by burying up to 9,000 civilians. The imagery showed rows of graves stretching away from an existing cemetery in the town of Manhush, outside the port city.

Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boychenko accused the Russians of “hiding their military crimes” in the mass graves and labeled it “the new Babi Yar” — recalling the ravine in Kyiv where the Nazis massacred nearly 34,000 Ukrainian Jews during World War II.

It was not the first time Moscow has claimed to have captured Mariupol. At a joint appearance with his defense minister on April 21, Putin declared that “the completion of combat work to liberate Mariupol is a success.” Even though die-hard Ukrainian forces were still inside the Azovstal plant at that point, Putin ordered the military to seal off the complex “so that not even a fly comes through.”

After continued bombardment, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on May 16 the evacuation of his forces from the bunkers and tunnels beneath Azovstal was done to save the lives of the fighters.

“Ukraine needs Ukrainian heroes to be alive. It’s our principle,” Zelenskyy said.

The Azovstal complex covers 11 square kilometers (4 square miles) and is threaded with about 24 kilometers (15 miles) of tunnels and bunkers. Earlier in May, hundreds of civilians were evacuated from the plant during humanitarian cease-fires.

One civilian evacuee from Azovstal, who made it to the Ukrainian controlled city of Zaporizhzhia on May 3, said she went to sleep at the plant every night afraid she wouldn’t wake up. “You can’t imagine how scary it is when you sit in the bomb shelter, in a damp and wet basement, and it is bouncing and shaking,” said Elina Tsybulchenko, 54.

While Russia described the troops leaving the steel plant as a mass surrender, the Ukrainians called it a fulfilled mission.

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Zelenskyy, described the defense of Mariupol as “the Thermopylae of the 21st century” – a reference to one of history’s most glorious defeats, in which 300 Spartans held off a much larger Persian force in 480 B.C. before finally succumbing.

“The Azovstal defenders thwarted the enemy’s plans to seize eastern Ukraine, drew away enormous numbers of enemy forces, and changed the course of the war,” Podolyak said.

Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said Mariupol’s defenders gave Ukraine “critically important time to form reserves and regroup forces and receive help from partners. And they fulfilled all their tasks.”

The U.S. has gathered intelligence that shows some Russian officials have become concerned that Russian forces in the ravaged port city of Mariupol are carrying out grievous abuses, a U.S official familiar with the newly declassified findings told CBS News.

The Russian officials are concerned that the abuses will backfire and further inspire Mariupol residents to resist the Russian occupation. The U.S. official, who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that the Russians, who were not identified, also feared that the abuses will undercut Russia’s claim that they’ve liberated the Russian-speaking city.

Meanwhile, teams of war crimes investigators are hard at work across Ukraine gathering evidence they hope will lead to more prosecutions of Russia’s invading forces. 

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