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| Russia says Mariupol captured, apart from Azovstal plant | Russia says Mariupol captured, apart from Azovstal plant |
| (32 minutes later) | |
| About 2,000 Ukrainian militants are still entrenched at Azovstal steel plant, Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu told President Putin | About 2,000 Ukrainian militants are still entrenched at Azovstal steel plant, Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu told President Putin |
| Russian forces have fully captured the key Black Sea port-city of Mariupol, Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu told President Vladimir Putin on Thursday. However, more than 2,000 Ukrainian militants still remain entrenched at the Azovstal steel plant in the city, he added. | |
| When Mariupol was encircled in early March, some 8,100 Ukrainian soldiers, foreign mercenaries, and nationalist militants – including members of the notorious Azov Battalion – remained inside, according to the minister’s estimates. | |
| More than 1,400 militants have laid down their arms, Shoigu said, adding that over 142,000 civilians have also been evacuated from the city that has been under siege for weeks. | |
| President Vladimir Putin has called Shoigu’s plan of storming the Azovstal plant “inadvisable” and ordered to “safely block” the area instead while extending to those inside another offer to lay down their arms. | |
| Russia has twice sought to establish a humanitarian corridor for those willing to leave the plant in recent days, but both attempts failed. The Russian Defense Ministry has been calling on the remaining Ukrainian forces, besieged at a steel plant, to lay down their arms, offering safety guarantees, if they accept the surrender proposal and halt all hostilities. | |
| Shoigu said that the Russian forces had announced ceasefires and opened humanitarian corridors for two hours a day for the past two days on Putin’s orders to allow those inside the Azovstal plant to leave. | |
| Sergey Volyna, the commander of Ukraine’s 36th Marines Brigade, which is holed up at the plant, claimed that “hundreds” of civilians were trapped in the facility. | |
| “We have made some 90 buses and 25 ambulances ready for them,” Shoigu said, adding that cameras have been mounted in the area to monitor the situation. “No one has left the Azovstal [plant],” he added. Some 100 civilians from other areas seized this opportunity to evacuate, the minister said. |