Thursday, March 28

Ukraine confirms the surrender of Mariupol


Ukraine confirmed on Tuesday the surrender of the city of Mariupol, converted into an icon of the resistance against the Russian invasion. The General Staff of the Ukrainian Army said on Tuesday that the Soldiers who resisted Russian military forces at the Azovstal steel mill in the southeastern city of the country have fulfilled their mission. This communication has been made public after the evacuation from more than 260 combatants woundedhalf a hundred of them under gravity, who resisted in the steel plant, the only bastion of resistance.

“The Mariupol garrison completed its combat mission. The Supreme Military Command ordered the commanders of the units stationed in Azovstal to save the lives of the personnel” who remain there, the military high command assured in a statement published on Facebook and reproduced by local agencies. A total of 53 seriously wounded soldiers from the steel mill were taken to a medical center in Novazovsk, in the area occupied by Russian forces. Another 211 defenders were evacuated through the humanitarian corridor to Olenivka, also in Moscow-controlled territory. All of them, according to the kyiv government, will return to the territory under Ukraine’s control through a exchange procedure.

The military statement does not clarify, on the other hand, if there are still soldiers in the steel facilities that have been bombed by the Russians for weeks, nor does it specify who was responsible for the transfer of the Russian soldiers, most of them linked to the ultranationalist Azov regiment.

prisoner exchange

It is also unknown how the hypothetical exchange these soldiers for Russian prisoners of war captured in Ukraine, according to the agreement reached between the two countries, of which not many details have been offered.

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“The defenders of Mariupol are the heroes of our time. They will forever be in history,” said the note that speaks of the components of this detachment, which include elements of the “special forces of the ‘Azov’ regiment, the 12th Brigade of the National Guard of Ukraine, the 36th Brigade of the Marine Corps, border guards, policemen, volunteers and the Mariupol Territorial Defense”, among others. According to the military command, “thanks to maintaining positions in Azovstal we did not allow the enemy to transfer a detachment of 17 groups of tactical battalions (about 20,000 troops) to other parts” of Ukraine.

“Therefore, they prevented the implementation of the (Russian) plan for the quick capture from the city of Zaporizhia (south) and to reach the administrative border of regions” such as the pro-Russian Donetsk, in the east. “Keeping the main enemy forces around Mariupol allowed us to prepare and create defensive lines where our troops are today and reject the aggressor with dignity. We had critically needed time to form our reserves, regroup forces, receive assistance from our partners,” the statement said.

Therefore, “the most important common task for all of Ukraine and the whole world is to save the lives of the defenders of Mariupol,” the General Staff reiterated. The coastal city of Mariupol has suffered the siege of the russian troops Almost since the beginning of the country invasionlast February 24.

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The city, on the shores of the Sea of ​​Azov, was heavily bombed and practically destroyed, with the population unable to flee the area living in subhuman conditions. For weeks, only several hundred soldiers offered resistance to the Russian troops entrenched in the facilities of the Azovstal steel complexwhere civilians who were evacuated on May 7 also took refuge.

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The fall to Russian hands of this last military stronghold of Mariúpol would provide Moscow with the possibility of establishing a corridor between eastern Ukraine (Donbas) and the Crimean peninsula, which it has already controlled since 2014.


www.elperiodico.com

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