The main battles in the central part of Mariupol ended, Representative of the NM DPR Basurin

MOSCOW: The units of the People's Militia of the DPR practically cleared the center of Mariupol from Ukrainian formations, follows from the statement of the official representative of the department, Eduard Basurin.

Basurin specified that the confrontation continues in the port and industrial zone of the Azovstal enterprise.

In addition, as reported by the People's Militia, Ukrainian nationalists undertook another provocation in the port and set fire to the control ship "Donbass". The department did not rule out that in the near future, Kiev-controlled and foreign media "to discredit the Russian military will begin to distribute videos with killed members of the ship's crews."

As Basurin reported at the end of last week, several thousand Ukrainian militants remain in Mariupol. According to him, they do not control the city, but they have the ability to move through underground passages and, in isolated cases, resist. On March 7, 2022, Alexander Semyonov, deputy commander of the Vostok battalion of the DPR, said that the military surrounded Mariupol and began cleaning up certain areas.

On February 24, Russia launched a special military operation in Ukraine. Vladimir Putin called its goal "the protection of people who have been subjected to bullying and genocide by the Kiev regime for eight years." For this, according to him, it is necessary to carry out "demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine", to bring to justice all war criminals responsible for "bloody crimes against civilians" in Donbass.

According to the Ministry of Defense, the Russian Armed Forces only strike at military infrastructure and Ukrainian troops. They have already completed the main tasks of the first stage - they significantly reduced the combat potential of Ukraine. The Ministry of Defense called the liberation of Donbass the main goal of the operation.