Two Ukrainian women whose husbands are defending a besieged steel plant in the southern city of Mariupol are calling for any evacuation of civilians to also include soldiers
Two Ukrainian women whose husbands are defending a besieged
steel plant in the southern city of Mariupol are calling for any evacuation of civilians to also
include soldiers, saying they fear the troops will be tortured and killed if
left behind and captured by Russian forces.
“The lives of soldiers matter too. We can’t only talk about
civilians,” said Yuliia Fedusiuk, 29, the wife of Arseniy Fedusiuk, a member of
the Azov Regiment in Mariupol. “We are hoping that we can rescue soldiers too,
not only dead, not only injured, but all of them.”
She and Kateryna Prokopenko, whose husband, Denys Prokopenko, is
the Azov commander, made their appeal in Rome on
Friday for international assistance to evacuate the Azovstal plant, the last
stronghold of Ukrainian resistance in the strategic and now bombed-out port
city.
An estimated 2,000 Ukrainian defenders and 1,000 civilians are
holed up in the plant's vast underground network of bunkers, which are able to
withstand airstrikes. But conditions there have grown more dire, with food,
water and medicine running out, after Russian forces dropped “bunker busters”
and other munitions in recent days.
The United Nations has said Secretary-General António Guterres
and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed on arranging evacuations
from the plant during a meeting this week in Moscow,
with the U.N. and International Committee of the Red Cross involved. But the
discussions as reported by the U.N. concerned civilians, not combatants.
Speaking in English, Prokopenko, 27, called for a Dunkirk-style
mission, a reference to the World War II maritime operation launched to rescue
British and Allied troops surrounded by German forces in northern France.
“We can do this extraction operation ... which will save our
soldiers, our civilians, our kids,” she said. “We need to do this right now,
because people — every hour, every second — are dying.”
The women said 600 of the soldiers are wounded with some
suffering from gangrene. They provided grisly videos and photos sent by their
husbands of men with amputated limbs, bullet wounds and other injuries. They
said people are eating porridge, old cheese and rudimentary bread.
The Azov Regiment has its roots in the Azov Battalion, which was
formed in 2014 by far-right activists at the start of the conflict in the east
between Ukraine and Moscow-backed separatists, and which has elicited criticism
for its tactics.
Fedusiuk said she and Prokopenko were seeking help from Europe,
the United States and international organizations to find a diplomatic
resolution to the Azovstal standoff.
And she said the troops would never surrender to Russian
capture.
“We don’t know any Azov soldier who came (back) alive from
Russian soldiers, from 2014, so they will be tortured and killed,” Fedusiuk
said. "We know that definitely, so it is not an option for them.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/ap-mariupol-rome-antonio-guterres-vladimir-putin-b2068930.html
BESIEGED
UKRAINIAN COMMANDER APPEALS TO TURKEY
By
-
May 1, 2022
Besieged Ukrainian commander appeals to
Turkey
EMERGENCY DIGEST- Sergey Volina, the
commander of Ukraine’s 36th Marines brigade, which is still entrenched at the
Azovstal steel plant in the Black Sea port-city of Mariupol together with the
neo-Nazi Azov regiment, has called on Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan
to “extract” Ukrainian
troops from the city.
The commander was talking to Turkish broadcaster Haberturk TV late
on Friday.
“I now call on the Turkish people and the president to launch the
extraction procedure,” Volina said, urging Ankara to “do everything possible to take the
Mariupol garrison to Turkey” and provide it with “security guarantees.”
The marines’ commander has admitted that his troops are in a “very difficult” situation
after 65 days of fighting Russian forces. He has also revealed that those
entrenched at the steel plant include some 600 wounded soldiers.
He did not elaborate on whether he was referring solely to his own
unit or to the Azov regiment as well. Volyna has also maintained that there are
civilians hiding in the underground catacombs beneath the vast complex of the
steel plant and there are injured among them as well.
Ankara has not responded to this appeal in any way so far. The
Black Sea port of Mariupol has seen intense fighting since the start of the
Russian military action in Ukraine in late February. The city was encircled by
Russian forces and militias of the two Donbass republics in early March.
The Ukrainian forces as well as foreign mercenaries and militants
that initially holed up in the city eventually retreated to the Azovstal plant.
Now, the site remains the last pocket of resistance. Built in Soviet
times, the facility has a massive network of underground tunnels, turned into a
fortress by the Ukrainian forces.
On April 21, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu told President
Vladimir Putin that Mariupol has been fully under Russia’s control except for
the Azovstal plant. The president then called off an assault on the facility
and instead offered those entrenched there a chance to surrender.
Russia guarantees anyone who would lay down their arms their
lives, as well as “decent
treatment under all international norms,” Putin outlined at
that time. Moscow also said it sought to organize humanitarian corridors for
those willing to exit the Azovstal plant several times before April 21 but
those attempts failed.
Instead, the Azov militants and the Ukrainian forces, including
Voluna himself, demanded they be allowed to leave through the assistance of an
unnamed “third party” while
also keeping their personal weapons. They also maintained that surrender was
not an option.
On April 22, the Russian Defense Ministry said that the Ukrainian
fighters and foreign mercenaries only need to raise white flags along the
perimeter of Azovstal to be able to surrender. “This humanitarian offer by Russia remains in force
24/7,” it added. Some 2,000 Ukrainian fighters remain at the
plant, according to the ministry’s estimates.
Kiev still maintains that Ukrainian forces would be able to rescue
the troops holed up in Mariupol if provided with enough weapons. “There is a military way” to
unblock Mariupol, President Volodymyr Zelensky told the media on April 21 as he
called on western nations to supply Ukraine with more pieces of heavy
equipment.
Russia attacked the neighboring state in late February, following
Ukraine’s failure to implement the terms of the Minsk agreements, first signed
in 2014, and Moscow’s eventual recognition of the Donbass republics of Donetsk
and Lugansk. The German- and French-brokered protocols were designed to give
the breakaway regions special status within the Ukrainian state.
The Kremlin has since demanded that Ukraine officially declare
itself a neutral country that will never join the US-led NATO military bloc.
Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked and has denied
claims it was planning to retake the two republics by force.
https://emergencydigest.com/2022/05/01/besieged-ukrainian-commander/
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