DEVELOPING: Fall of Mariupol appears at hand; fighters leave steel plant
More than 260 fighters — some of them seriously wounded and taken out on stretchers — left the ruins of the Azovstal plant on Monday and turned themselves over to the Russian side in a deal reached by the two warring parties. Ukrainian authorities said they were working to extract the remaining soldiers from the sprawling steel mill, though how many were still there was unclear.
It was not clear what would happen to the fighters. A Russian official cast doubt on whether Moscow would hand all of them back to Ukraine in a prisoner of war exchange.The operation signaled the beginning of the end of a nearly three-month siege that turned Mariupol into a worldwide symbol of both defiance and suffering.
And it would give Russia an important victory after repeated setbacks on the battlefield and diplomatic front, beginning with the abortive attempt to storm Kyiv, the capital. Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of the lower house of the Russian parliament, said without evidence that there were “war criminals” among the plant defenders and that they should not be exchanged but tried.
A full negotiated withdrawal could save lives on the Russian side, too, sparing its troops from what almost certainly would be a bloody battle to wrest the labyrinth-like plant from Ukrainian control. The withdrawal could also work to Moscow’s benefit by taking the world’s attention off the suffering in Mariupol.
“Both sides will be able take pride or boast about a victory – victories of different kinds,” he said.
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