'Mariupol is the city of the dead.' One soldier's first-hand account of life on the front lines

Ukrainian lieutenant on destruction in Mariupol Lieutenant Ilya Samoilenko of the Azov Regiment speaks of the devastation in Mariupol.

Lieutenant Ilya Samoilenko strokes his beard, his backdrop a plain white wall, while off-camera the sounds and shadows of orders being issued and soldiers walking back and forth are his constant companions.

“It’s a total war, because the Russian idea is to eliminate all the Ukrainians,” he said.

CTVNews.ca interviewed Samoilenko, an officer of the Azov Regiment of the Ukrainian National Guard on Sunday, during the then recently-brokered ceasefire in Mariupol.

Samoilenko is one of many Azov soldiers inside the Azovstal steel plant, seen widely as the final bastion of Ukrainian defence inside the coastal city that has been decimated by Russian airstrikes since the invasion 10 weeks ago. He is a noticeable figure, with an eye patch and prosthetic hand – he has been with the Regiment for several years.

The Azov Regiment are a controversial unit within the Ukrainian military, originally a militia force formed when Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, and credibly accused by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in a report about the ensuing conflict of torture, rape, beatings and intimidation of the press.

Samoilenko shared with CTVNews.ca first-hand accounts of events in Mariupol, the wider Ukrainian war effort and his responses to questions about the Regiment’s extremist reputation.

CTVNews.ca is unable to verify certain claims made by Samoilenko due to the nature of the war effort.

The following anecdotes have been edited for clarity, brevity, grammar and length.

ON AZOV FIGHTING ON ITS OWN IN MARIUPOL’S AZOVSTAL STEEL PLANT

The Azov Regiment are the last remaining Ukrainian forces inside Mariupol after a bloody and protracted urban fight. They have been forced into taking shelter inside the Azovstal steel plant, a sprawling Soviet-era facility full of underground tunnels and bunkers, for several weeks.

On Tuesday, reports that the plant was being rushed by Russian forces hoping to end the stalemate with Azov, surfaced. CTVNews.ca was unable to reach Samoilenko by time of publication to confirm.

“We are fighting on our own, surrounded, encircled, blocked, [with] friendly forces at least 100 kilometres away from us,” Samoilenko said Sunday. “We're not feeling abandoned. We have everyday connection with the higher commands. They know about our actions and what's is most important. We can rely on our resources and on our potential. We're not counting on somebody to help us. We're doing this. We know our potential, despite the heavy casualties that we suffered for the last couple of months. A lot of people here who've been injured in a fight. They came back. They recovered. And there they are, continuing fighting, being wounded. Well, that's symbolic of us.”

To Samoilenko, the war against Russia is not just about fighting for “the existence of Ukraine,” but for the “free world.”

“We know very good that the Russians, if they will not be stopped… they will go further to Poland, to Belarus, to the Baltic countries, probably further into Europe, the imperialistic ideas of the Russia, not just Putin… They are doing this all the time,” he said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has not publically expressed any further plans beyond his original outlining of the so-called “special military operation” that launched the invasion into the Ukraine. His focus has shifted away from capturing Kyiv and deposing its government, to extending Russian control of Ukraine’s eastern territory.

Samoilenko said the Azov Regiment killed at least 2,000 Russian troops and wounded 7,000 more, enough casualties that the Russians “mobilized two waves of reservists” and dropped them in Mariupol.

“That’s 15 per cent of all enemy casualties in all of Ukraine….and 10 per cent of losses of enemy armour, tanks and armoured fighting vehicles,” he said. At this time CTVNews.ca is unable to verify the Russian losses in Mariupol due to lack of data.

“For us, it's all or nothing. The situation is we've been fighting against Russia for eight years in the hot phase of the war. A lot of people here have extensive battle experience, combat experience. All of them are battle proven,” he said. “Russia made a big mistake. Great mistake with the invasion of Ukraine, because they could not even imagine how mad people will be if they will do this. But they did. And we are here and we are mad. That's the point.”

ALLEGATIONS OF RUSSIAN WAR CRIMES INSIDE MARIUPOL

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, harrowing accounts of rape, torture, civilian executions and other war crimes have been continuous. In Mariupol, a Russian air-strike on a maternity hospital spurred global outrage after images and video of wounded pregnant women being carried on stretchers surfaced.

“The Russian army killed at least 25,000 people here in Mariupol alone, and at least 5,000 more all around Ukraine,” Samoilenko said. “Their tactics are very blunt and simple, they use overwhelming power of artillery, indiscriminate airstrikes and bombardments…and their primary targets is civilians.”

Samoilenko remarked that the civilian casualties in the war outweighed the military thus far, something he alleged was a purposeful action by Russian troops as modern warfare capabilities allow for “precision guided munitions.”

“If you’re military personnel, if you are a soldier, and your goal is to cease the enemy’s ability to resist, your primary command targets will be the command points, heavy weaponry, radar systems….not civilian houses and city blocks,” he said. “It’s outrageous.”

Samoilenko said the Azov Regiment, along with many other Ukrainian entities, are trying to publish as much “proof” as possible that the Russian army is committing war crimes.

“All these materials must be used as evidence at the International War Tribunal in The Hague,” he said. “The problem is we are trapped here by the Russians…we’re surrounded from all directions, and the Russians will not let us leave – because we are witnesses.”

Samoilenko cited satellite photos of supposed mass graves in Mariupol as evidence of at least 15,000 deaths and alleged the Russians have been using mobile crematoriums to help hide evidence.

“Just imagine the situation. Imagine you're a civilian person and the Russians bombed your house, destroyed your life, destroyed a school of your children, destroyed the hospital, destroyed the convenience store, a few blocks away from your home,” he said. “And then these ‘liberators,’ those on the shiny green tanks… they're just dropping a few pieces of bread to your mouth. When you were sitting in the basement for more than two months, you haven't seen sunlight for months. Just imagine the feelings of the children, who are making toys from the empty shell casings. They're making their childish songs about the kinds of bombs and rockets that are falling…They just they stole the childhood from them”

“The civilians should not be a part of it, because in Mariupol, it's living hell,” he continued. “And right now, the Russians, we hear some of their chattering in the radio about a group of young women that's been walking on the street and a few soldiers have been talking about how they should capture these women, bring beer and have fun. And by this I mean not having a tea party.”

ON THE AZOV REGIMENT’S REPUTATION AND ALLEGATIONS OF EXTREMISM

At one point in the interview, Samoilenko brought up the Azov Regiment’s reputation and allegations of their extremist views, which CTVNews.ca has previously reported on.

“We are fighting for good, but there is a little bit of bitterness in this situation about our legacy….that we are neo-Nazi, far-right extremists who provide white supremacy terrorism throughout the world,” he said. “This is basically not true because we’re just patriots of our country, we want to defend it.”

When CTVNews.ca brought up the fact that members of the Regiment are known for sporting Nazi symbols such as the “SS” lighting bolts, the Sonnenrad or “Black Sun” and the Wolfsangel rune, along other extremist insignias, Samoilenko said, “I know we are.” But he added: “The wolfsangel is not the wolfsangel, it just has some resemblance…I admit it looks like it, but it's not. We do not share the ideology.”

“The Black Sun is because some of the people who became the base of Azov when it was created in 2014 were very interested in European mysticism. But me personally, I do not share this [view],” Samoilenko continued. “Some people think that we have like just 25 year-old, two metres high white Viking-skinheads warrior berserkers [in Azov]. Yeah, but we're not… there is only one thing that we share in common. Every one of us is very determined in the craft of defending our country.”

The Regiment, formerly known as the “Azov Battalion,” was folded into the Ukrainian National Guard, where it remains a semi-separate entity with its own command structure, but still tied to the official military of the country.

In the ensuing years, despite efforts to present itself as reformed, the Azov Regiment has continued to be linked to the far-right National Corps party leadership, and been accused of harbouring and encouraging members who espouse anti-Semitic, neo-Nazi and other extremist ideology in their ranks, seemingly with impunity. Azov has attacked anti-fascist demonstrations, city council meetings, media outlets, art exhibitions, the LGBTQ2S+ community, foreign students and Roma people.

Samoilenko went on to say that the Azov Regiment was denied weaponry, training and other military aid from the U.S., the U.K, and other NATO countries and instead took old Army field manuals from the U.S. to learn tactics to make them more effective in fighting Russian forces.

“We knew all this time, we were preparing for this – and you can see the proof of the results of those actions right now in our battle potential….we can teach the rest of the world and the rest of the Ukrainian forces to fight like this,” he said.

CTVNews.ca asked Samoilenko whether he understood why NATO countries would deny training and military aid to the regiment.

“I admit we had some people with the far-right….we had these photos with the swastikas, that’s true. I won’t deny, but it was far, far away from today,” he said, alleging the regiment had “cleaned up” its ranks from those who shared those views. “This childish sub-cultural symbolism were squeezed out of our organization.”

When asked about CTVNews.ca’s recent reporting on the involvement of the Canadian Armed Forces through Operation UNIFIER in the training of extremist factions in the Ukrainian military, including the Azov Regiment, Samoilenko confirmed some of the findings.

“If you want to hear interesting thing - we sent some of our sergeants to the Operation UNIFIER, Canadian Forces training centre of National Guard here in Ukraine, who were excluded from this course because they said ‘we will not work with them,’” he said. “But you know what was very interesting, our instructors also came there with the sergeants to prove their skills, and they knew the material better in the sense of tactical medicine… after that, when these people [Canadians and Azov Regiment members] met in person, our instructors and their instructors, they became friends - because a lot of this political nimbus, aura of ‘these guys are bad, we will not work with them’ - it disappeared because they are professionals, they speak on the language of professionals.”

A MESSAGE TO THE WORLD

CTVNews.ca asked if Samoilenko if he wanted to issue a statement or had a message to the world watching the war unfold in Ukraine.

“Stop being afraid of Russia,” he said. “That's not so hard.”

------

Edited by Phil Hahn

------