Azov Battalion Deputy Commander Sviatoslav Palamar announced today that the last Ukrainian military unit in the devastated port city of Mariupol will resist Russian forces as long as it can, despite food, water and medicine shortages, the Associated Press reported. .
In a video conference with Ukrainian officials and US generals, Palamar called on the United States to help evacuate about 600 wounded soldiers from the Azovstal plant and evacuate other Ukrainian fighters from the complex, the last stronghold of resistance in Mariupol.
Negotiations to release Ukrainian troops from Azovstal are “extremely difficult”, Deputy Prime Minister Irina Vereshchuk was quoted as saying by the DPA.
She promised that everything possible would be done to save the military. “It is possible (however) that the result will not satisfy everyone,” Vereshchuk warned at the same time.
Representatives of the Ukrainian authorities announced heavy fighting and new casualties in the Donbass, an industrial eastern Ukrainian region that Russia has set out to take.
One civilian was killed and 12 wounded in Russian artillery shelling in the Donetsk region of Avdeevka, said the governor of the eastern Ukrainian region, Pavlo Kirilenko.
Three people were killed in a shelling in the village of Shebelinka, Kharkiv region, the DPA reported, citing local authorities.
Two civilians were killed by Russian artillery in the Luhansk region, the governor’s administration said.
The fighting in Donbass is gaining strength. According to representatives of Western governments, the Russian army is not making much progress in its offensive, and at the same time the Ukrainian resistance is expected to become even fiercer, the DPA notes.
Ukraine’s chief prosecutor, Irina Venediktov, said she was preparing 41 war crimes charges against Russian soldiers.
She did not specify how many of the suspects will be tried in absentia.
Yesterday, a Russian serviceman was brought before a Ukrainian court for the first time since the start of the war on February 24. Vadim Shishimarin, 21, will be tried for killing an unarmed Ukrainian civilian at the start of the invasion.
Venediktov said next week will probably be the preliminary hearings of two more suspects who are on Ukrainian territory.
Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, the UN has registered the deaths of more than 3,500 civilians. However, most observers believe that many more were killed, the DPA notes.
–
