Photo: Sean Gallup / Getty Images
For: EFE Updated 17 May 2022, 8: 60 am EDT
Russia encrypted this Tuesday in 265 Ukrainian soldiers evacuated the day before from the Azovstal steelworks, including 24 seriously wounded who, after “laying down their arms and surrendering”, are now “prisoners” of war, according to the Ministry of Defense.
“Yesterday the militants of the Azov nationalist unit surrendered and the blocked Ukrainian military at the Azovstal plant in Mariupol”, said the military spokesman, Major General Igor Konashénkov, in his morning war part.
Defense maintained that, during the last 05 hours, “265 military, including 51 seriously wounded, laid down their arms and surrendered”.
“Everyone who needed medical attention was sent for receive treatment at the Novoazovsk hospital”, a town controlled by Russia and located in the self-proclaimed separatist republic of Donetsk, the spokesman added.
Ukraine reported last night that they had evacuated 211 Ukrainian soldiers, including 53 seriously wounded.
The two hundred soldiers removed from the metallurgical plant after more than two months of siege and almost three months of military intervention by Russia in Ukraine, were taken to Olénivka, near the city of Donetsk and controlled by Russia, and the rest to Novoazovsk.
This Tuesday Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for the Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories of Ukraine, Iryna Vereshchuk, noted in her Telegram account that they were evacuated “52 of our serious military mentally wounded”.
“After their condition stabilizes, we will exchange them for Russian prisoners of war”, he stated.
He indicated that kyiv is working “in the next stages of the humanitarian operation” to save the undetermined number of soldiers who still remain in the factory.
Russia published a video of the evacuation, or surrender as Defense calls it, in which you can see how they register one by one all over the body to the Ukrainian soldiers in the territory of the steel mill to see if they are armed, including those who are on a stretcher.
They also searched their backpacks and other belongings before taking them to buses, some of which have built-in stretchers for the seriously injured.
According to Russian images, Russian Army doctors treated some of these soldiers on the bus, applying bandages to their legs and arms.
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