Wives of Mariupol defenders appeal for soldiers' evacuation

>> 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.

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 1940 World War II maritime operation in which hundreds of boats were launched to rescue over 330,000 British and Allied troops surrounded by German forces on the beaches of 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. Video and images they shared with The Associated Press showed wounded men with stained bandages in need of changing; others had open wounds or amputated limbs.

The women said the images were taken sometime in the past week. The AP could not independently verify the date and location of the footage.

ALESSANDRA TARANTINO — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Kateryna Prokopenko, wife of Denys Prokopenko, commander of the Azov regiment, right, and Yulia Fedosiuk, wife of Arseny Fedosiuk, another member of Azov regiment, get emotional as they show photos of their husbands on their phones during an interview in Rome on Friday.