The battle for the city of
mariupol appears to be over,
after hundreds of Ukrainian
soldiers surrendered from their
final holdout. The city has
suffered one of Europe's
bloodiest battles since world
War two. And now, Russia appears
to hold the entire Ukrainian
port, its largest gain of the
war. Nick schifrin has the
story.
>> Ukrainian soldiers-wounded
but alive
and in the custody of their
enemy.
Russian TV showed its version of
what appears to be the beginning
of the end of the siege of
mariupol.
A lonely procession of the
wounded, some of the final
Ukrainian holdouts from the
azovstal steel plant. What
Russia today called a mass
surrender.
Ukraine admits more than 260
soldiers are being bussed to
russian-controlled territory in
Ukraine.
Some today arrived in
separatist-controlled olenivka,
on the site of a former penal
colony known for torture and
squallid conditions.
They held out for nearly 3
months, living and fighting from
tunnels designed to withstand
nuclear attacks.
Many of them in the azov
regiment, born from a right-wing
militia, now integrated into the
Ukrainian military.
They held out underneath the
sprawling azovstal steel plant.
Their resistance prevented
Russia from consolidating its
gains,
and today Ukrainian officials
called them heroes.
>> Mariupol drew in the Russian
Federation's forces for 82 days.
Their operation to seize the
east and south was held up. It
changed the course of the war.
An unknown number of Ukrainian
soldiers remain in the plant,
but Ukraine today said their
mission is no longer to fight.
Today in Kyiv those soldiers'
families, begged for their
release, even into Russian
custody.
>> They are trying everything to
get them out. We try ourselves
to help them in any way
possible.
>> They eat once a day. We hope
for extraction. This is what
we're fighting for. I don't see
another way out.
>> The city of mariupol is a
city in ruins. Ukrainian
officials estimate a brutal
10-week siege killed 20,000
civilians and destroyed 90
percent of the city. The w-h-o
warns it could now face
outbreaks of cholera.
The only videos of the city
today, heavily curated by
pro-Russian separatist
occupiers. Ukraine says
residents are forced to work in
exchange for food. But Russia's
control of the city appears to
complete its objectives in
southeast Ukraine.
Before the invasion, Russian
separatists controlled territory
up to a dozen miles east of
mariupol.
Today, Russian forces have
seized a 500-mile strip along
the southern coast, giving
Russia control of a land bridge
corridor to crimea, annexed in
2014.
>> This gives Russia a corridor
of land over which it can
resupply and access crimea, its
forces in crimea, its people in
crimea.
>> Kevin Ryan is a retired U.S.
Army brigadier general who
served as a defense attache in
Russia, and is now senior fellow
at the Harvard Kennedy school's
belfer center.
>> What's the significance of
Russia being able to claim that
it has seized all of mariupol,
including the plant?
>> Domestically, for Putin, this
is important for himself
politically to be able to show
that he has achieved a victory
once the forces that are engaged
and taking mariupol are finished
with their mission, those
Russian forces can be directed
elsewhere. They could go to the
south west and present a threat
to Odessa.
Or they could be used to to move
up into the eastern part of
Ukraine and help completely
occupy the donbas region.
>> In the donbas, Russian shells
continue to devastate
residential neighborhoods, like
in bakhmut today.
The top of an apartment complex,
ripped off, and gutted.
Among the wounded, a little boy,
whom first responders fought to
save.
Ukrainian soldiers are fighting
back with recently arrived
American howitzers. Ukrainian
officials say these weapons will
allow them to launch
counterattacks,
but it's not easy to evict
Russian forces from territory
they occupied.
>> The size of the Ukrainian
military versus the size of the
Russian military just simply
doesn't seem to suggest that
they could kick the Russian
forces out of the land that
Russia already occupies.
And are now at the mercy of the
Russian military. For the pbs