Mariupol: 1,730 Ukraine’s troops surrender
Despite the setback in Mariupol, Ukraine’s confidence has been growing after fighting the Russian attack to an effective standstill
KYIV: The Russian military said on Thursday that more Ukrainian fighters who were making a last stand in Mariupol have surrendered, bringing the total who have left their stronghold to 1,730, while the Red Cross said it had registered hundreds of them as prisoners of war.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said that the registrations of Ukrainian prisoners of war, which included wounded fighters, began on Tuesday under an agreement between Russia and Ukraine.
The Geneva-based humanitarian agency, which has experience in dealing with prisoners of war and prisoner exchanges, said however that its team did not transport the fighters to “the places where they are held” which was not specified.
Ukrainian fighters who emerged from the ruined Azovstal steelworks after being ordered by their military to abandon the last stronghold of resistance in the now-flattened port city face an uncertain fate. Some were taken by the Russians to a former penal colony in territory controlled by Moscow-backed separatists.
While Ukraine said it hopes to get the soldiers back in a prisoner swap, Russia threatened to put some of them on trial for war crimes.
The Red Cross cited rules under the Geneva Conventions that should allow the organisation to interview prisoners of war “without witnesses” and that visits with them should not be “unduly restricted”.
The organisation did not specify how many prisoners of war were involved.
It’s also not clear how many fighters are left at the plant. Russia previously estimated that it had been battling some 2,000 troops in the waterside plant.
Despite the setback in Mariupol, Ukraine’s confidence has been growing after fighting the Russian offensive to an effective standstill and forcing Moscow to withdrawal from around Kyiv and narrow its military goals.
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy who was involved in several rounds of talks with Russia, said on Thursday in a tweet that at this stage “do not offer us a ceasefire - this is impossible without total Russian troops withdrawal”.
“Until Russia is ready to fully liberate occupied territories, our negotiating team is weapons, sanctions and money,” he tweeted.
Ukraine’s military said in its morning briefing on Thursday that Russian forces were still pressing their offensive on various sections of the front in the east, but were being successfully repelled.
In the eastern Donbas region, which has been the centre of recent fighting as Russian forces on the offensive have clashed with staunch Ukrainian resistance, four civilians were killed in the town of Sievierodonetsk in a Russian bombardment, Luhansk governor Serhiy Haidai said. Three other civilians were wounded in the attack on Wednesday, and the shelling continued into early Thursday, Haidai said.
On the Russian side of the border, the governor of Kursk province said a truck driver was killed and several other civilians wounded by shelling from Ukraine. Separatist authorities in the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine said two civilians were killed and five wounded also in Ukrainian shelling over the last 24 hours.
Strategic ambiguity on Ukraine’s European perspective practised by some EU capitals in the past years has failed and must end.
Russian soldier on trial asks ‘forgiveness’
The first Russian soldier on trial for war crimes in Ukraine asked for “forgiveness” in a Kyiv court on Thursday.
“I know that you will not be able to forgive me, but nevertheless I ask you for forgiveness,” 21-year-old Russian sergeant Vadim Shishimarin said in court, addressing the wife of a 62-year-old civilian whom he admitted killing in the first days of the invasion.
After Germany said the war-torn country’s bid to join the European Union cannot be speeded up