The gaze in front of the lens, they all show significant injuries or a missing limb. All the men photographed on the pictures released by the Azov battalion to request, again, an evacuation of the steelworks where they are. “Every civilized world must see the conditions in which the wounded, crippled defenders of Mariupol live and act. They live in unsanitary conditions, with open wounds and the remains of non-sterile bandages, without the necessary medicines or food,” wrote the battalion on its Telegram channel, notably made up of Ukrainian nationalist fighters, denounced by the Russian authorities as one of the targets of the “denazification” put forward by the Kremlin. “We demand the immediate evacuation of the injured volunteers to territories controlled by Ukraine, where they can obtain help and appropriate care,” the message continues.
Report : Mariupol, the city where Putin fought
Several evacuations of civilians have taken place from Azovstal, which is still daily targeted by Russian strikes. This Wednesday, wives of soldiers from the Azov regiment were able to exchange a few words with Pope Francis, after the general audience. “We asked him to come to Ukraine, to talk to Putin, to tell him, ‘Let them go,'” said Kateryna Prokopenko, whose husband Denis is one of the heads of the Azov division. “We hope that this meeting will save their lives. We are ready for an action from the pope, from his delegation, our soldiers are ready to lay down their arms in the event of evacuation to a third country,” she continued. “We told the pope that 700 of our soldiers are wounded, that they suffer from gangrene, amputations, added Yulia Fedosiuk. Many of them died, we couldn’t bury them. […] He told us he was praying for us and that he would do whatever he could.”