The final outcome of Europe’s bloodiest battle in decades has remained publicly up in the air, with no confirmation of the fate of the hundreds of Ukrainian troops who had held out in a vast steel mill at the end of a nearly three-month siege.
Ukraine, which says it is aiming for an exchange of prisoners, has declined to say how many were inside the factory or comment on the fate of others since confirming that just over 250 had surrendered in the first hours after being ordered to yield.
The leader of the Russian-backed separatists who control the area said nearly half of the fighters remained inside the steelworks, where bunkers and underground tunnels had protected them from weeks of Russian bombardment.
“More than half have already left – more than half have laid down their arms,” Denis Pushilin told the Internet TV channel Solovyov Live. “Let them surrender, let them live, let them face honest charges for all their crimes.”
The injured received medical treatment while those who were healthy were taken to a penal colony and are being treated well, he added.
Ukrainian officials say they cannot comment publicly on the fate of the fighters as negotiations are underway behind the scenes to rescue them.
“The state is doing everything possible to carry out the rescue of our soldiers,” military spokesman Oleksandr Motuzaynik told a press conference. “Any information to the public could endanger this process.”
Russia denies accepting a prisoner exchange for them. Many of Azovstal’s defenders belong to a Ukrainian unit with far-right origins, the Azov Regiment, which Moscow calls Nazis and which it says should be prosecuted for its crimes. Ukraine calls them national heroes.
The end of the fighting Mariupol, the largest city Russia has captured so far, allows Russian President Vladimir Putin to claim a rare victory in the invasion he began on February 24. It gives Russia full control of the Sea of Azov and an unbroken stretch of territory along eastern and southern Ukraine.
Ukraine says tens of thousands of civilians died during nearly three months of Russian siege and bombardment that reduced the city to oblivion. The Red Cross and the United Nations say the true toll has not been calculated, but is at least in the thousands, making it the bloodiest battle in Europe since the Chechnya and Balkan wars of the 1990s.
Moscow denies having targeted civilians in its “special military operation” to disarm and “de-nazify” its neighbor. Ukraine and the West claim that Russian forces have killed several thousand civilians in a war of unprovoked aggression.
DONBAS EXPECTATIONS
Russian forces were driven out of northern Ukraine and the region around the capital at the end of March, and pushed back from the second largest city Kharkiv this month.
In a sign of the return to normal life in the capital, the United States reopened its embassy in Kyiv on Wednesday.
“The Ukrainian people…defended their homeland against the inadmissible invasion of Russia and, as a result, the star banner once again flies over the embassy,” said US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
But Russia continues its main offensive using artillery and armor en masse, trying to capture more territory in eastern Donbas, consisting of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, which Moscow claims in the name of the separatists.
The Ukrainian General Staff said Thursday that Russia’s attacks were concentrated on Donetsk. Russian forces “suffered heavy losses” around Slovyansk, north of Donetsk.
Police said on Telegram on Thursday that two children had been killed in the town of Lyman, Donetsk. Serhiy Gaidai, governor of the neighboring Luhansk region, said four people were killed and three injured in the shelling of the frontline town of Sievierodonetsk.
In Russia, the regional governor of the Kursk border region has accused Ukrainian forces of shelling a border village, killing at least one civilian. The two sides have been accusing each other of cross-border bombings for weeks.
Reuters was unable to verify these reports.