More than 1,200 fighters have surrendered at Mariupol’s Azovstal steelworks plant since the initial reports earlier this week that 300 had laid down their arms, with the wounded transferred to a Russian-controlled hospital, the Russian Ministry of Defense noted.
The MoD said that “694 Ukrainian fighters who had been holed up in Mariupol’s Azovstal steelworks have surrendered over the past 24 hours, according to a report by the country’s RIA news agency,” Al-Jazeera reported.
But, according to regional reports, the Ukrainian Azov battalion’s top commanders had not yet come out of the Azovstal plant. Pro-Russian separatist leader Denis Pushilin was quoted as saying about the top officers: They have not let [the plant].”
Those reports come in spite of Ukrainian military and defense officials saying on Tuesday that there had been an intentional decision made to end “combat operations” there. Ukrainians who laid down their weapons were taken prisoner and moved to Russian-controlled areas. The Kremlin touted the move as an obvious “surrender.”
For his part, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called it an “evacuation” operation.
“The operation to rescue the defenders of Mariupol was initiated by our military and our intelligence officers with the goal to return them home. The work continues and this work requires tact and time,” he said....<<Read More>>>...
