More than 260 Ukrainian soldiers, including 53 wounded, have left the besieged Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, the Ukrainian General Staff said.
The injured were taken to a medical center in Novoazovsk, Ukrainian officials said. Another 211 were evacuated to the Russian-controlled village of Olenifka and will later return to Ukrainian-controlled areas as part of an exchange of detainees, said Hanna Malyar, Ukraine’s deputy defense minister. Efforts to remove the remaining Ukrainian military from the vast Azovstal steel plant continue, always with the Ukrainian staff.
“Activities to rescue the remaining defenders (…) continue,” according to the Ukrainian staff, who described them as “heroes of our time” who “will go down in history forever,” as they prevented implement the (Russian) plan to quickly occupy Zaporizhia “, a Ukrainian city 200 kilometers west of Mariupol.
In a video released by his services, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that the essential thing is “to save the lives of our young men”, insisting “I want to emphasize this: Ukraine needs its heroes alive”.
Last week, Ukrainian authorities said more than 1,000 Ukrainian soldiers, including 600 wounded, according to one of their commanders, remained in the last pocket of resistance in Mariupol. They were fortified in the basements of the steel industry during the siege of the port of strategic importance in the Sea of ​​Azov almost from the beginning of the Russian invasion of the Ukrainian territory on February 24.
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