Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu to cancel plans to storm the Azovstal steel plant in the besieged Ukrainian port city of Mariupol and instead blockade it in order to protect the lives of Russian soldiers.

During a televised meeting on April 21, Shoigu told Putin that “all of Mariupol is under the control of the Russian Army” and Moscow-backed separatists, while the Azovstal plant “is securely sealed off” after weeks of heavy bombardment and intense fighting throughout the city, where tens of thousands of civilians are trapped amid what aid workers have called “apocalyptic” conditions.

Shoigu told Putin that more than 2,000 Ukrainian fighters were still holed up in the vast plant, which has a large underground component to it, and claimed that Russian forces only needed several days to “complete” the takeover of the compound.

Putin said during the meeting it would be “impractical” to storm the huge industrial complex as there was “no need to climb into those catacombs and crawl underground beneath those industrial facilities.”