New Delhi: In a significant update from the battlefield on the 83rd day, Ukraine’s forces surrendered control of the Azovstal steel complex in Mariupol late Monday.
The steel plant had become synonymous with Ukraine’s defiance through the war, as the Azov regiment put up a bloodied resistance for weeks whilst bunkered at the plant.
According to The Kyiv Independent, a local daily, Denys Prokopenko, the commander of the Azov regiment, stated the regiment completed their orders at the Azovstal plant, and held the Russian soldiers at the plant, preventing them from redeploying to other axes for 82 days.
The Azov regiment, a far-right all-volunteer infantry military unit, are ultra-nationalists and accused of harbouring neo-Nazi and white supremacist ideology.
“The ‘Maruipol’ garrison has fulfilled its combat mission,” the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said in a Facebook post.
“The supreme military command ordered the commanders of the units stationed at Azovstal to save the lives of the personnel … Defenders of Mariupol are the heroes of our time,” the statement added.
Evacuation efforts underway
Shortly after the surrender, given the situation’s urgency, Russian and Ukrainian forces negotiated the safe evacuation of 264 Ukrainian soldiers.
They were transported from the plant to Russian occupied settlements in Donetsk Oblast, US-based think tank Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said in its assessment
While it is still unclear how many people remain in underground bunkers within the plant, Ukraine’s Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar Tuesday said Ukraine’s military, National Guard and Border Service were conducting coordinated campaigns to help evacuate those still left behind.
The ISW reported that Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar declared that Russian forces evacuated 53 seriously wounded service members to Russian-controlled towns of Novoazovsk, approximately 60 kilometres from the plant, and 211 to Olenivka, about 90 kilometres from Azavstol.
Zelensky appeals to save Ukrainian fighters
Russia reportedly opened a humanitarian corridor for wounded Ukrainian soldiers to receive treatment in occupied Donetsk Oblast on 16 May.
Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar noted that the Ukrainian fighters would be exchanged for Russian soldiers who had been captured earlier, UK broadcaster BBC reported.
Further reflecting the immediacy of the evacuation, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, in a video address, said that he hoped the lives of the service members defending the besieged plant would be saved, adding that “Ukraine needs its heroes alive”.
The steel plant had been the last obstacle in Russia’s bid to create a land bridge between the Crimean peninsula in the South and the territories they had captured in the east, The New York Times reported. With its fall, this land bridge may now become a reality.
Reports also suggest that Russian forces may now reopen the Port of Mariupol to establish shipping routes from Russia in a strategic move.
In other developments, Ukrainian forces have reached the Russian border towards the northeast of Kharkiv city. Thus, continuing to push Russian troops out of the country’s northeast.
Further, continued ground operations in Donetsk Oblast by Russian troops received some criticism from pro-Russian military analysts. One such Telegram channel claimed that marginal tactical success in the region has come at the cost of heavy losses.
Also read: Russia captures villages east of Izyum, surrounds trapped Ukrainian soldiers in Mariupol