LONDON (Reuters) – White brightly-burning munitions were shown cascading down on the Azovstal steel works in the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol in a video posted by a pro-Russian separatist commander on Sunday.
The Ukrainian military said there was no let-up on Sunday in Russia’s bombardment of the steel works in the southern port, where a few hundred Ukrainian fighters are holding out weeks after the city fell into Russian hands.
Reuters was not able to immediately identify the type of munitions used or the time of the video which was posted on the Telegram messaging application by Alexander Khodakovsky, a commander of the pro-Russian self-proclaimed republic of Donetsk.
“If you didn’t know what it is and for what purpose – you could say that it’s even beautiful,” Khodakovsky said in a message beside the video. Khodakovsky could not be immediately reached for comment.
Russian forces pummeled the port city for nearly two months, turning Mariupol into a wasteland as the war in Ukraine escalated.
Groups of Ukrainian fighters and civilians took to the Azovstal works – a vast Soviet-era plant founded under Josef Stalin and designed with a labyrinth of bunkers and tunnels to withstand attack.
Civilians have been evacuated from the bunkers but Ukrainian fighters remain holed up there.
(Writing by Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
