Rescue services lose hope of finding survivors under the ruins of the shopping center bombed by the Kremlin
Ukraine has repatriated 144 soldiers in the largest prisoner swap with Russia since the start of the war. Among them are 95 defenders of the Azovstal steelworks, which partly resolves the uncertainty about the fate of these fighters, who have not been heard from since their surrender to the invading troops at the end of May.
“This is the largest exchange since the beginning of the Russian invasion. Among the 144 released, 95 are defenders of Azovstal,” confirmed the Ministry of Defense on Telegram, which avoided offering more information on the date or characteristics of the operation. It does seem confirmed that the exchanges have intensified during this month as a result of the negotiations between kyiv and Moscow, more favorable in this aspect than in starting new peace talks. Last Tuesday, the armies of each country exchanged 17 soldiers. A week earlier, they also agreed to repatriate the bodies of soldiers killed on the front, which allowed Ukraine to recover 64 bodies of combatants killed in the Mariupol steel works.
According to the intelligence services, “most” of the last prisoners transferred are “severely injured” by “bullets or shrapnel”, or suffer “burns and fractures”. Among them are ninety officers, non-commissioned officers and sergeants and the bulk are members of the National Guard, who played a prominent role in the Mariupol resistance. 43 militiamen from the Azov Battalion have also been transferred, despite the fact that Moscow had shown its willingness to judge all the components of this regiment as “Nazis”. Even Parliament was in favor of bringing back the death penalty for them.
The head of Ukrainian intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov, responsible for the rescue of the Azovstal defenders, already warned on the 22nd that he hoped to get “a significant number” of Ukrainian prisoners to return home “in the near future.” All of them were interned in a colony in the province of Donetsk under the control of the pro-Russian separatists, where a total of 2,449 soldiers were transferred, who laid down their arms during the long siege of Azovstal as the only way to save their lives. The commanders of the Azov Battalion are not in that colony, but were taken prisoner to Moscow. A different fate is that of two British militiamen and another Moroccan captured in the steel mill, who have been accused of being mercenaries and sentenced to death by a pro-Russian court.
The artillery does not rest
On the other hand, the kyiv authorities have given up hope of finding survivors in the rubble of the shopping center bombed on Monday in Kremenchuk, a city located in the Poltava region, southeast of the Ukrainian capital. So far, 20 deaths and 59 injuries have been recorded, according to Interior Minister Denís Monastirski, while more than 40 reports of missing persons remain in force, which would indicate that the final number of deaths would be higher.
However, sources from the Ministry of the Interior quoted by the ‘Kyev Independent’ media affirmed yesterday “they have no hope” of finding survivors, despite the work of the almost 4,500 members of the rescue teams that participate in the tasks of clearing debris and searching for victims. Rescuers believe that some bodies could have even disintegrated due to the missile explosion or the high temperatures reached by the subsequent fire.
Apart from Kremenchuk, the invading Army continues with systematic bombing in the southeast, which between yesterday and Tuesday claimed five lives in Mikolaiv and Dnipro. The Ukrainian General Staff recognized the virtual loss of the Lugansk province in Donbas due to the artillery siege. In Kherson, meanwhile, the Russian security forces arrested the mayor, Ihor Kolykhayev, accused of rejecting the orders given by the invaders, who occupied this key enclave in the Black Sea area in the first weeks of the war. He is the third president of a major city detained by Moscow.
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