Evacuation of Ukrainian soldiers from the Azovstal factory must continue
A rescue operation of Ukrainian fighters from the huge Azovstal steelworks – the last pocket of resistance once morest the Russian army in the strategic port of Mariupol – must continue today, according to kyiv, which now considers that these men have ” filled “ their mission.
The soldiers of the garrison stationed in Azovstal, of which more than 260 were already evacuated yesterday, “fulfilled their combat mission”greeted the General Staff of the Ukrainian army in a statement, and order was given to their commanders to ” save the life “ of those who remain.
The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, for its part, explained on Telegram :
Unfortunately, today Ukraine cannot unblock Azovstal by military means.
Ukrainian authorities said last week that more than 1,000 Ukrainian soldiers – including 600 wounded – were in this industrial complex, a real “city within the city” with its kilometers of underground galleries. They had entrenched themselves there following suffering the siege of Mariupol for more than a month, attacked by the Russian army at the start of the war, which began on February 24, and is now totally devastated. This city, on the shores of the Sea of Azov, is strategically located between the Crimea annexed by Moscow in 2014 and the mining region of Donbass (eastern Ukraine), where there are two pro-Russian separatist “republics” and where Russia is currently stepping up its offensive.
Some “53 seriously injured were evacuated from Azovstal to Novoazovsk for medical assistance and 211 others were transported to Olenivka through a humanitarian corridor”Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Ganna Malyar announced last night in a video. These two localities are located in territory controlled by Russian and pro-Russian forces in eastern Ukraine, but the fighters were to be repatriated to territory controlled by Ukraine “as part of an exchange procedure”she clarified.
The Ukrainian general staff confirmed the evacuation of these 264 soldiers and specified overnight that “rescue operation of stranded defenders of Ukraine” on the Azovstal site ” continues “, without specifying their number. Their fierce resistance notably prevented the rapid capture by the Russian army of the large Ukrainian city of Zaporizhia, 200 kilometers to the west, according to the general staff.
The Russian Ministry of Defense announced on Monday that it had established a ceasefire around Azovstal, to allow the evacuation of wounded Ukrainian soldiers.
