Now Kiev puts a condition: “Without the return of the soldiers, no negotiations can begin.” An exchange with Viktor Medvedchuk, perhaps, the Ukrainian oligarch who is a friend of Putin
FROM OUR REPRESENTATIVE KIEV «Let’s try with the Turks». Overwhelmed by the nightmare of the steel mill, pressed by compulsory heroism, they say that Volodymyr Zelensky did not sleep whole nights. In Chernihiv they had printed the billboards, “We are waiting for our heroes at home.” Su Change.org the petition had started from the wives of Azov’s soldiers, one million signatures, for “an international figure” to intervene to mediate. But for weeks there hadn’t been a single light in those dungeons: «It was impossible to unblock the situation by military means – explains Zelensky -, we had to rely on diplomacy ».
Which? The first opening, explains a European diplomatic source, came with a phone call on the morning of 8 May. The Russians had finally said yes to the UN corridor and the Red Cross, to get at least women, children and the elderly out of the Azovstal. Now it was about saving the skin of the military: not only Azov, also the 12th Brigade of the National Guard, the 36th of the Marines, counter-terrorism, the agents of the Sbu services, the policemen, the border guards, the volunteers, all those who were trapped fighting under there. When the cell phone rings that morning, it’s the call Zelensky was waiting for. On the other side is the historical leader of the Crimean Tatars, Mustafa Dzhemilen, who sits at the Kiev Rada. He is a good friend of Erdogan, for days he has been asking the Turkish president to find an escape route: a ship to take the besieged out of that hell. Dzhemilen has a Kremlin message for Ukrainians, leaked through Ankara: it must be Zelensky who gave the order to Azov to surrender, the Russians say, only in this way can the situation be unblocked. “We don’t have hours – warns Dzhemilen -, we have seconds”. It is shortly until May 9th, however. At Putin’s celebrations on Red Square. On the fateful anniversary of the Soviet victory over Nazism. To the day when the whole world looks to Moscow. And it is not possible, Zelensky thinks, to give the Russians such an announcement: the Ukrainian president asks that they still resist inside the steel mill. Just a little. Then, it can be done: he will personally give the order to surrender.
The mediators
The role of the Turks. The pressure of the Israelis and the French. The intervention of the Swiss, who have just reopened the embassy in Kiev and want to host a kind of peace conference in July. And probably, a decisive phone call from the Americans. “The release was agreed with Western partners,” says Zelensky, to avoid the sure death of “hundreds” (Ukrainians say) or “thousands” (2,439, the Russians specify) of soldiers closed for 82 days in the 11 square km of the largest steel mill in Europe. Now that it’s over, Kremlin TVs show Azov’s tattooed swastikas and Hitler eagles, to minimize the military stalemate into which Putin’s seventeen brigades have been forced by a handful of resistance. And even the rhetoric of Kiev transforms surrender into an evacuation – “they are our Thermopylae” -, making the definitive Russian conquest of Mariupol pass for “a Pyrrhic victory”.
The pressures
But the question remains: what prompted Zelensky to give up? And in exchange for what? On May 8, he was still hanging on to requests to the UN secretary general, Antonio Guterres. And on May 10 alone, a week before the solution, the Russians had bombed the steel plant 38 times in one day. On the 12th, the Ukrainian ambassador to the UN had desperately appealed to international humanitarian law. On the 13th, there was the public plea of three former Ukrainian presidents, Petro Poroshenko, Viktor Yushchenko and even the unpopular Leonid Kuchma, “the friend of Moscow”. On the 14th, Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said that only about sixty trapped people would be evacuated. Suddenly, four days ago, Zelensky gave up: “We need heroes alive,” he said. He could no longer hold up the pressure of some of his soldiers, explains the diplomatic source, who were even willing to go on a “sensational and highly symbolic” offensive on Azovstal. The president considered Mariupol now lost – “90 percent of our helicopter pilots who tried to bring aid to the steel mill died” – and did not feel like continuing the tug-of-war. How much those who supported the heroes digested it, it is not known. The wing of those who do not accept surrenders, or even negotiations, is predominant: “I know no other borders than those of the 1991 independence”, clarifies the head of military intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov, in case the idea of giving up something returns ‘other. The Azovs go to their fate in Russian prisons, Zelensky says “we will take them home”. An exchange with Viktor Medvedchuk, perhaps, the Ukrainian oligarch friend of Putin who “Ze” had arrested more than a year ago, unleashing the wrath of the Tsar. Or an exchange of prisoners of war: in the eight years of Donbass, it is the only thing on which Moscow and Kiev have always found an agreement.
May 21, 2022 (change May 21, 2022 | 22:57)
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