Ukrainian fighters from Mariupol consider leaving under conditions
The last Ukrainian fighters in Mariupol refuse to surrender, but ask the international community for “security guarantees”at a time when Russian forces intend to seize the entirety of this strategic city in southeastern Ukraine. “We are ready to leave Mariupol with the help of a third party”armed with weapons, “in order to save the people entrusted to our care”said this morning on Telegram, Sviatoslav Palamar, deputy commander of the Azov battalion.
Several hundred civilians, lacking food and water, were entrenched in the Azovstal steel and metallurgical plant with the 36e Ukrainian army battalion and the Azov regiment, the last two combat units in Mariupol, according to Ukrainian authorities.
Sviatoslav Palamar called the “civilized world” to vouch for “security guarantees”while assuring that the two battalions did not accept “the conditions of the Russian Federation regarding the surrender of arms and the capture of our defenders”.
“The situation is difficult, even critical”he continued, in this huge factory, the last island of resistance in this port at the southern end of the Donbass, where would also be entrenched “regarding a thousand civilians, women and children”et “hundreds injured”, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The civilians trapped inside the factory, the number of whom it was impossible to independently confirm, “are afraid because of the constant bombardments”adds Commander Palamar, pleading for a ceasefire.
Earlier, kyiv had made a proposal. “We are ready to hold a ‘special negotiating session’ in Mariupol. To save our boys, [le bataillon] Azov, soldiers, civilians, children, the living and the wounded. Everyone “implored Wednesday evening, on Twitter, Mykhaïlo Podoliak, adviser to the Ukrainian presidency and one of the negotiators with Russia.
Moscow, which has issued several ultimatums to the defenders of Mariupol, is determined to take this port which would allow it to connect Crimea, which it annexed in 2014, and the pro-Russian separatist republics of Donbass.
