More than half the Ukrainian fighters in the bunkers below the Azovstal steel plant have surrendered, the leader of the Russian-backed rebel Donetsk region said on Thursday, and the International Committee of the Red Cross is registering them.
The most devastating siege in Russia's invasion is drawing to a close after nearly 1,000 Ukrainian fighters laid down their arms this week, giving themselves up to pro-Russian forces.
"Let them surrender, let them live, let them honestly face the charges for all their crimes," Pushilin said. Russia, though, says the Azov Regiment, which began as an extreme-right nationalist paramilitary organisation, is a group of radically anti-Russian nationalist fighters and casts them as modern-day Nazi sympathisers.
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