Ukraine’s notorious Azov Battalion has released these images showing Russian forces bombing what remains of the infrastructure of the besieged city of Mariupol, saying that Vladimir Putin now wants to destroy Ukraine’s economy.

The images come after reports showed civilians being targeted, with a children’s hospital, a maternity ward and numerous homes and blocks of flats having been destroyed. Shocking images last week also appeared to show a lone, elderly civilian being shot by a Russian tank.

The latest reports suggest that 90 percent of the city has been turned to rubble. Azov also released a second piece of footage that it said showed its own soldiers “destroying enemy infantry” as “the struggle for Ukrainian Mariupol continues”.

With the Russians’ apparent strategy of trying to break the morale of the people of Mariupol by bombing civilians and besieging the city in a bid to starve them out not yielding the desired results, the Azov Battalion now says that “enemy aircraft are dropping bombs on the infrastructure of Mariupol”.

It also said: “Factories and industrial enterprises that provided jobs and allowed them to conduct international trade are being destroyed. Thus, the occupiers are trying to destroy Ukraine’s economy.”

Azov issued a statement yesterday (Monday, 21st March) shortly before 5pm, obtained by Newsflash and attributed to its Deputy Commander, who goes by the call sign ‘Kalyna’, saying “bombs fall every 10 minutes”.

It also said that four Russian landing ships had also begun firing on what was left of the city, claiming that Azov forces had successfully destroyed at least four Russian tanks, an unspecified number of armoured personnel carriers and killed “many hordes of infantry”.

Azov also said that it had managed to sink a Russian boat and that it had seized numerous weapons from the Russians, which it can now use against them.

The Deputy Commander said that his soldiers were “bravely defending Ukraine” and called on them to kill “special forces” and “traitors who are mobilised and thrown like cannon fodder” against them.

He labelled the Russian forces the “barbarians of the 21st century” and said that they were without “conscience or honour”.

He added: “We believe in the victory of Ukraine! We believe that the sky in Mariupol will be closed. The Sea of Azov will be ours again!”

Azov signed off with the now famous “Slava Ukraini!” (“Glory to Ukraine!”).

The Azov Regiment, also known as the Azov Battalion, is a notorious group of soldiers who were officially incorporated into the National Guard of Ukraine in 2014 after recapturing Mariupol from pro-Russian separatists in June that year.

And now they appear to be determined to push out the invading forces from the largely destroyed city, refusing to cede eastern Ukraine to the Russians.

The Azov Regiment began as a far-right, neo-Nazi group that started out as an urban militia and a political party that has since expanded and, through service to Ukraine, has been incorporated into the Armed Forces. Azov, on a national level, failed in past elections to win any seats in the Ukrainian parliament via its political branch.

But Putin appears to have capitalised on the presence of this group in eastern Ukraine to announce his so-called “special military operation” to “de-Nazify Ukraine”, apparently painting the whole country with the same brush as this regiment, despite Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy being Jewish and the descendant of a man who lost his three siblings to the Nazis.

NATO countries have been reluctant to impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine despite President Zelenskyy’s repeated requests for them to do so as civilian casualties continue to rise.

But the US and the EU, along with the UK and their allies, have been providing unprecedented military support as Ukraine’s military and civilians resist the Russian forces amid widespread reports that they have become bogged down.

The UN’s International Court of Justice has ruled Russia’s invasion of Ukraine illegal and has ordered Russian President Vladimir Putin to remove his troops immediately. Former British Prime Ministers Sir John Major and Gordon Brown have called for the creation of a Nuremberg-style international tribunal to investigate Putin.

The proposal has been co-signed by 140 intellectuals and academics, as well as Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and Benjamin Ferencz, who is 102 years old and who prosecuted Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg.