Photo: RUSSIAN DEFENSE MINISTRY PRESS SERVICE / EFE
The General Staff of the Ukrainian Army said on Tuesday that the soldiers who resisted the Russian military forces at the Azovstal steel mill in the city of Mariúpol, in the southeast of the country, have fulfilled their mission, after having managed to evacuate more than 200 military.
“The Mariupol garrison fulfilled 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 posted on Facebook and reproduced by local agencies.
These instructions were given hours after the evacuation of 53 seriously wounded soldiers from the steel mill, who were transferred to a medical center in Novoazovsk, in the area occupied by Russian forces.
Others 200 defenders were evacuated through from the humanitarian corridor to Olenivka, also in territory controlled by Moscow.
All of them, according to the kyiv Government, they will return to the territory under the control of Ukraine through an 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 do they specify who was responsible for the transfer of the Russian soldiers, most of them linked to the ultra-nationalist Azov regiment.
It is also unknown how the hypothetical exchange of these soldiers for Russian prisoners of war captured in Ukraine will take place. , according to the agreement reached between the two countries, of which not many details have been offered.
“The defenders of Mariupol are the heroes of our time. They will be forever 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 brigade 12 of the National Guard of Ukraine, the brigade 36 of the Marine infantry, border guards, police, volunteers and the territorial defense of Mariúpol”, among others.
According to the military command, “thanks to holding positions in Azovstal we did not allow the enemy to transfer a detachment of 17 tactical battalion groups (about 20.000 effective) to other parts” of Ukraine.
“Therefore, they prevented the implementation of the (Russian) plan for the rapid capture of the city of Zaporizhia (south) and to reach the administrative border of regions” such as the pro-Russian Donetsk region in the east.
“Keeping the main enemy forces around Mariupol allowed us to prepare and create defensive lines where our troops are today and repulse the aggressor with dignity. We had the critically necessary time to form our reserves, regroup forces, receive assistance from our partners,” the statement said.
Therefore, “the The most important common task for the whole of Ukraine and the whole world is to save the lives of the defenders of Mariupol”, reiterated the General Staff.
The coastal city of Mariupol has suffered from the siege of the Russian troops practically since the beginning of the invasion of the country, the past 24 February.
The city, on the shore of the Sea of Azov , was heavily bombed and was practically destroyed with the population that could not flee the area living in subhuman conditions.
For weeks, only several Hundreds of soldiers offered resistance to the Russian troops entrenched in the facilities of the Azovstal steel complex, where they also civilians who were evacuated on May 7 took refuge.
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The fall to Russian hands of this last military stronghold of Mariupol would provide Moscow with the possibility of establishing a corridor between the this Ukrainian (the Donbas) and the Crimean peninsula, which he already controls from 2014.
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