A new UN convoy is expected on Friday to evacuate the last civilians entrenched in the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol, the last pocket of Ukrainian resistance in this strategic port of Donbass, without however assurance of a truce in the fighting. A hundred civilians had already been able to leave this complex last weekend, during an evacuation organized with the UN and the ICRC.
Information on the situation in the Mariupol steelworks, where civilians and combatants live entrenched in huge underground galleries, nevertheless remained contradictory. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky assured Thursday evening that Russian forces continued to shell the steel plant despite the Russian promise of a three-day truce that began Thursday morning. The Russian bombardments continue to rage “while civilians still have to be evacuated, women, children”, he said. “Imagine this hell! And there are children! More than two months of non-stop bombardment, death constantly close.
Russian President Vladimir Putin for his part affirmed Thursday evening that “the Russian army was always ready to ensure the evacuation of civilians” from Azovstal, who might still be 200 in number, trapped with Ukrainian fighters in this complex. . Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov meanwhile assured that the Russian army respected the ceasefire around the factory, and that humanitarian corridors around Azovstal “were working”.
What the Ukrainian fighters on the spot have denied. The deputy commander of the Azov regiment, which defends these installations, Sviatoslav Palamar, assured in a video that “bloody fights” were taking place inside the site itself and that the Russians “did not keep their promise” of truce.
