Final Mariupol defenders signal end to campaign at Azovstal
A leader of the far-right Azov Regiment says an order has been issued to cease in the group’s last-ditch defense of Mariupol, which has been gutted by the Russian military, and that the effort will now focus on saving lives and removing the dead.
“The senior military leadership has issued an order on saving the life and health of the garrison’s servicemen and termination of the defense of the city,” said the commander of the regiment, Denys Prokopenko, in a video posted to Telegram.
He argued that the main priorities of his fighters had been the treatment of “civilians, the wounded and the killed,” and suggested that most of those conditions had been met, with civilians and the heavily injured evacuated and then “exchanged and delivered to territory controlled by Ukraine.”
It is not clear if all the fighters remaining at the Azovstal plant will now leave and lay down their arms.
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