Azovstal fighters to be exchanged for captive Russians
More than 260 Ukrainian soldiers holed up in the Azovstal steel plant for 82 days were evacuated to Russian-controlled towns on Monday night, local time, pending an ‘‘exchange’’, the Ukrainian government said.
The evacuation appeared to cede control of the strategic port city of Mariupol to Russia after months of bombardment, drawing to a close one of the war’s bloodiest and most high-profile battles.
The bitter resistance of the soldiers in the Azovstal plant had become a symbol both of Ukraine’s ability to withstand Russia’s invasion, and of Russia’s willingness to destroy Ukrainian cities that held out.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called it a ‘‘difficult day’’, but said it was ‘‘aimed at saving our country and our people’’.
Zelenskyy struck a grave tone as he announced the evacuation, calling the long-suffering soldiers ‘‘heroes’’, but the evacuation likely marked a significant defeat for Ukraine.
‘‘I want to underline: Ukraine needs its Ukrainian heroes alive. This is our principle,’’ he said in a late night address.
Ukraine’s government said 53 ‘‘seriously injured’’ people were evacuated from the steelworks plant to a medical facility in Novoazovsk, a Ukrainian town that has been controlled by Moscow-backed separatists since 2014. Another 211 were taken out through a humanitarian corridor to territory controlled by proRussia separatists in Donetsk.
Ukraine’s deputy defence minister, Hanna Maliar, said all the evacuees were subject to an exchange, without providing further details.
Maliar said missions are under way to rescue the remaining fighters inside the plant.
‘‘Thanks to the defenders of Mariupol, Ukraine gained critically important time,’’ she said. ‘‘And they fulfilled all their tasks. But it is impossible to unblock Azovstal by military means.’’
After nightfall on Monday, several buses pulled away from the steel mill accompanied by Russian military vehicles. Some of the evacuated troops were wounded and carried out of the buses on stretchers. Some 600 troops were believed to have been inside the steel plant.
The steelworks was the last Ukrainian-held bastion in the once prosperous port, now in ruins after months of a Russian siege that Ukraine says killed tens of thousands of people.
The siege left Mariupol’s remaining residents huddled in basements with no food and water and streets littered with dead bodies.
Civilians were evacuated from inside the plant earlier this month.
The remaining soldiers, some of whom are members of the Azov battalion, have for weeks resisted Russian bombing and attempts to storm their labyrnthine hide-out.
Photographs taken by one of the trapped soldiers show large numbers of wounded, with missing limbs covered in dirty bandages.
Zelenskyy said Ukraine’s military launched an operation to ‘‘save the defenders’’ of Mariupol, some of whom were ‘‘severely wounded’’, but did not divulge the details of any potential agreement with the Kremlin.
‘‘I’m very grateful to you, on behalf of all Ukrainians, on my behalf and on behalf of my family,’’ he said in a video message.
Meanwhile, desperate families of the soldiers on Monday visited Turkey calling on President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to lobby Vladimir Putin, his one-time ally, on behalf of their loved-ones.
The wives of three Ukrainian soldiers and the mother of another Azovstal defender told reporters Turkish mediation was their only hope.
Wiping tears from her face with a shawl, Nataliya Zarytska said ‘‘we are pleading for help as the (Russian) grip around Azovstal has tightened.’’
Zarytska said her husband told her ‘‘I don’t think we will see each other again’’ in their last text message a month ago. –