A Ukrainian navy commander holed up in the last redoubt of the besieged city of Mariupol released a video message early Wednesday saying his men had just hours to live.
In a video sent to the BBC and other media, Maj. Serhiy Volyna said his troops would not surrender but called for international assistance for the 500 wounded soldiers and the hundreds of women and children he said were sheltered with them in a silver city steel mill.
“This is our last message to the world. It could be our final message. We may only have days or hours left,” said Major Volyna.
“We make a call for help to the leaders of the world,” he added. “We urge them to organize an extraction and take us to a third country.”
The Azovstal iron and steel factory – a huge plant of more than 10 km² – has become the last stronghold of Ukrainian resistance in Mariupol.
“The enemy units outnumber us ten to one, they have dominance in the air, artillery, ground troops and machinery and tanks,” reiterated Volyna, who is commander of the 36th Marine Brigade.
He refrained from saying how many Ukrainian soldiers remain at the plant but said they had “good fighting spirit.” However, the situation of the wounded was “very serious”. “They’re in the basement, they’re rotting there,” he described.
Mariupol has been Russia’s strategic goal since its forces invaded Ukraine in February.
The Russian Defense Ministry has given the Ukrainian forces entrenched in the Azovstal factory another ultimatum to lay down their arms and surrender by 11:00 GMT on Wednesday.
Not a single Ukrainian soldier accepted the same offer they made on Tuesday, the ministry said in a statement.
However, Ukraine appears to have reached a preliminary agreement with Russia to evacuate civilians, the Ukrainian deputy prime minister announced.
Ukraine hopes to send 90 buses to the besieged city to evacuate some 6,000 women, children and the elderly, Mariupol’s mayor said on television.
But such agreements have been difficult to implement in this war.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky told the BBC last week that he believed as many as 20,000 have been killed in Mariupol in Russia’s shelling of the city and an unknown number of civilians have been taken to Russian territory.
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BBC-NEWS-SRC: https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-internacional-61162062, IMPORTING DATE: 2022-04-20 10:30:05
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