Yesterday Ukraine ordered its troops entrenched in the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol to lay down their weapons, after almost three months of resistance to the Russian offensive, which has devastated this port city.
“The higher military command gave the order to save the lives of the servicemen of our garrison and to stop defending the city,” said Denys Prokopenko, commander of the Azov regiment, one of the Ukrainian units at the steelworks.
The Russian Defense Ministry released a video showing soldiers leaving the plant, some on crutches. The evacuation will allow the removal of the dead. “I hope that soon the families and everyone in Ukraine will be able to bury their fighters with honors,” Prokopenko added.
The spokesman for the Russian Ministry of Defense, Igor Konashénkov, confirmed that the army “totally liberated” the steel company after the surrender of the last entrenched soldiers. “Since May 16, 2,439 Azov Nazis and Ukrainian servicemen blocked at the steel mill have surrendered.”
Yesterday, May 20, the last group of 531 troops surrendered.
Konashénkov specified that the head of the Azov battalion surrendered to the Russian forces and was evacuated in a “special armored vehicle” to prevent him from being attacked by hostile inhabitants. “The tunnels at the site, where the fighters were hiding, came under the complete control of the Russian armed forces,” he stressed.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu informed President Vladimir Putin of the “completion of the operation and the liberation of the plant and the city of Mariupol.” He noted that Moscow is close to fully controlling the breakaway Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine.
The capture of Mariupol gives Vladimir Putin his greatest military victory to date. Controlling it allows him to create a land bridge with Crimea, annexed by Moscow in 2014, and deprive Ukraine of a key port in its economy and daily life.
It is estimated that of a population of 450,000 before the invasion, only 100,000 people remain, many without food, water, heat or electricity.
The siege and bombardment of this strategic town have led to numerous accusations of war crimes, and it is feared that 20,000 people have died.
Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksandr Motuzyanyk stated that “the Russian occupation forces are carrying out heavy shelling along the entire line of contact and trying to hit with their artillery deep into the defenses of the Ukrainian troops.” ».
Putin’s government has established an operational center to rebuild the Donietsk and Luhansk republics, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Jusnulin said. The military is closely monitoring Western arms supplies to Ukraine, Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov said.
The Ukrainian authorities recognized that about 300,000 square kilometers of the country, just under half of the territory, will have to be demined after the war.
Associated Press/OnCuba.
