Ukrainian soldiers from Azovstal
Russia says it will evacuate wounded Ukrainian soldiers from Azovstal
reuters.com: Russia said on Monday that it had agreed to evacuate wounded Ukrainian soldiers from the bunkers below the besieged Azovstal steel works in Mariupol to a medical facility in the Russian-controlled town of Novoazovsk.
"An agreement has been reached on the removal of the wounded," the Moscow defence ministry said in a statement.
"A humanitarian corridor has been opened through which wounded Ukrainian servicemen are being taken to a medical facility in Novoazovsk."
Ukraine's Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Malyar told Ukrainian television: "Any information can harm the processes that are taking place ... Inasmuch as the process is under way, we can't say what's happening right now."
As Russian forces pummelled Mariupol for nearly two months, some civilians and Ukrainian fighters sought refuge in the Azovstal works - a vast Soviet-era plant founded under Josef Stalin and designed with a labyrinth of bunkers and tunnels to withstand attack.
Most civilians were evacuated from the plant this month after the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross brokered a deal with Russia and Ukraine.
But Ukrainian fighters remain at the plant. Videos and pictures posted online have shown some with serious injuries.
Relatives appealed on Monday to Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan in Istanbul to help extract the defenders.
Natalia Zaritskaya, wife of a member of the Ukrainian Azov Battalion, told reporters: "The ring around Azovstal has tightened. We can't delay any further. We pin our last hope and believe that through the joint efforts of Turkey, through its President Erdogan, and China, through its President Xi Jinping, and God himself, it is possible to save Azovstal and the people who are there on the cusp of life and death.
"They are in hell. They receive new wounds every day. They are without legs or arms, exhausted, without medicines."
On Sunday, brightly burning white munitions were seen raining down on the steel works in what a British military expert said looked like an attack with phosphorus or other incendiary weapons.
-
- Economics
- 17 May 2022 10:42
In World
-
Saboteurs attacked France's TGV high-speed train network in coordinated actions that caused chaos on the country's busiest rail lines ahead of the Paris Olympics opening ceremony on Friday.
-
Kamala Harris signaled a major shift on US Gaza policy Thursday, with the presidential hopeful telling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to seal a peace deal and insisting she would not be "silent" on the suffering in the Palestinian enclave.
-
The solar system's tiniest planet may be hiding a big secret. Using data from NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft, scientists have determined that a 10-mile-thick diamond mantle may lie beneath the crust of Mercury, the closest planet to the sun.
-
A marine tanker carrying industrial fuel sank in rough seas off the Philippines on Thursday, causing the death of a crew member and an oil spill that could spread to waters off the capital Manila, officials said.
Leave a review