Azovstal Steel Plant in Mariupol
Putin refuses free withdrawal of fighters
04/29/2022, 03:10 am
Both UN Secretary-General Guterres and President Zelenskyy hope that Russia will agree to a refugee corridor for all those trapped from the embattled Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol. Now a spokesman for President Putin says that he rejects such talks.
Russia has rejected calls for negotiations on a corridor for all those trapped at the Azovstal steel plant in the embattled Ukrainian port of Mariupol. “President (Vladimir Putin) has said it very clearly: civilians can go in any direction, the military must come out and lay down their arms,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the state news agency TASS. They are guaranteed life and medical care. But nothing more.
Moscow does not want to grant them a free withdrawal. There is no topic for negotiations, emphasized Peskow. According to Ukrainian sources, up to 1,000 civilians are locked up in the Azovstal steelworks, along with soldiers and fighters from the nationalist Azov regiment. Earlier, after talks with UN Secretary-General António Guterres, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Kyiv was ready for immediate negotiations on a humanitarian corridor from the Azovstal steelworks.
Guterres had spoken to Zelenskyj about the possibility of creating such a refugee corridor. “Mariupol is a crisis within a crisis, with thousands of civilians in need of life-saving assistance,” Guterres said. You would need an escape route to escape the “apocalypse”. The UN chief had reported to Zelenskyj that during his talks with Putin he had received a commitment in principle that the United Nations would be involved in building such an escape corridor together with the Red Cross.
Zelenskyj expects “humane attitude” from Russia
After the conversation, Selenskyj was initially optimistic. According to the Ukrainian news agency Unian, he now believes that the siege of the Azovstal steelworks can be ended and that a “successful result” can be achieved in Mariupol. “We expect a humane attitude towards these people from the Russian Federation.”
In his video address that evening, Zelenskyj once again emphasized the importance of the visit by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. “It was very important that the Secretary General visited Borodyanka in the Kyiv region and saw with his own eyes what the Russian occupiers were doing there. There is no doubt that the Russian army in Ukraine laid the foundations of the world order established after the Second World War trampled underfoot,” said the President.
After the conclusion of the talks with Guterres, a total of five rockets were fired at Kyiv. Nevertheless, he believes that evacuations in Mariupol are possible with the help of the UN: “But we also need the Russian side, which approaches the matter without cynicism and actually implements what it says.”