Mariupol – Kyiv said it has ordered its full garrison at the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol to evacuate, bringing an apparent end to the bloodiest battle in Europe for decades.
Reuters reoprted of buses leaving the steelworks overnight and five of them arrive in the Russian-held town of Novoazovsk, where Moscow said the wounded would be treated.
In this photo taken from video released by the Russian Defense Ministry Press Service on Tuesday, May 17, 2022, wounded Ukrainian servicemen lay in a bus as they are being evacuated as they are being evacuated from the besieged Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, Ukraine.
In one, marked with the Latin letter 'Z' that symbolises Russia's assault, wounded men were stacked on stretchers three bunks high. One man was wheeled out, his head tightly wrapped in thick bandages.
The capture of Mariupol would make it the biggest city to be taken by Moscow’s forces yet and would give the Kremlin a badly needed victory, though the landscape has largely been reduced to rubble.
While both sides spoke of a deal under which all Ukrainian troops would abandon the huge steelworks, important details were not yet public and if any prisoner swap had been agreed upon.
Russia called the operation a mass surrender. The Ukrainians avoided using that word and instead said its garrison had completed its mission.
The operation signaled the beginning of the end of a nearly three-month siege that turned Mariupol into a worldwide symbol of both defiance and suffering. The Russian bombardment killed over 20,000 civilians, according to the Ukrainian side, and left the remaining inhabitants — perhaps one-quarter of the city’s prewar population of 430,000 — with little food, water, heat or medicine.
Gaining full control of Mariupol would give Russia an unbroken land bridge to the Crimean Peninsula, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014, and deprive Ukraine of a vital port. It could also free up Russian forces for fighting elsewhere in the Donbas, the eastern industrial heartland that the Kremlin is bent on capturing.
-Ap/Reuters