Last ‘heroes’ to be evacuated

MARIUPOL: FIRST WAR CRIMES TRIAL SET TO START

Ukraine was seeking to evacuate the last soldiers holed up at the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol yesterday, its president said, as the first war crimes trial of a Russian soldier since the invasion began was set to get under way in Kyiv.

As the war nears its third month, Azovstal has become emblematic of the fierce Ukrainian resistance that has repelled the Russian invasion far more effectively than expected, and forced President Vladimir Putin to recalibrate his military aims from taking the capital Kyiv to focussing on the east of the country.

A unit of soldiers had been holding out in the Mariupol plant’s underground maze of tunnels, stalling Russia’s progress through surrounding territory, but on Tuesday, Moscow said more than 260 had surrendered.

Kyiv’s defence ministry said it would do “everything necessary” to rescue the undisclosed number of personnel still in the steelworks, but admitted there was no military option available.

“The evacuation mission continues, it is overseen by our military and intelligence,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said. “The most influential international mediators are involved.”

His advisor, Oleksiy Arestovich, said they would not comment further while the operation was ongoing. “Everything is too fragile there and one careless word can destroy everything.”

Those who have left Azovstal were taken into Russian captivity, the Russian defence ministry said. The defence ministry in Kyiv said it was hoping for an “exchange procedure... to repatriate these Ukrainian heroes as quickly as possible”.

But their fate was unclear, with Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov refusing to say whether they would be treated as criminals or prisoners of war.

Russian forces have been accused of committing a multitude of war crimes since the invasion.

Yesterday, a 21-year-old soldier was set to go on trial in Kyiv in the first attempt to prosecute the alleged abuses.

Vadim Shishimarin, from Irkutsk in Siberia, is accused of shooting an unarmed civilian and faces a possible life sentence.

The International Criminal Court was deploying its largest-yet field team to Ukraine. –

Picture: AFP DEATH WATCH. Yarvoslava, 51, who believes her husband is under the debris, waits as soldiers and members of a rescue team clear the scene after an abandoned school was shelled in Sydorove, Ukraine.