By AFP
KYIV: Ukrainian forces holed up in the sprawling Azovstal steelworks in the Russian-controlled city of Mariupol said on Sunday they would not surrender and vowed to fight on.
“We, all of the military personnel in the garrison of Mariupol, we have witnessed the war crimes performed by Russia, by the Russian army,” said Ilya Samoilenko, an Azov regiment intelligence officer.
“We are witnesses. Surrender is not an option because Russia is not interested in our lives.”
The Azovstal steel mill is the last pocket of Ukrainian resistance in the devastated port city and its fate has taken on a symbolic value in the broader battle since Russia’s invasion.
“All our supplies are limited. We still have water. We still have munitions. We will have our personal weapons. We will fight until the best resolution of the situation,” Samoilenko said during a press conference.
He added that the regiment would not abandon its 200 or so injured soldiers.
“We can’t abandon our injured, our dead — these people deserve fitting treatment, they deserve a burial worthy of the name. We won’t leave anyone behind us,” he said.
The wife of one of the Azov regiment’s leaders demanded the government acted decisively so that the remaining forces could survive and relive their story with their children and grandchildren.
“We must not stay here crying, we must do everything to save them,” Kateryna Prokopenko, wife of the Azov regiment’s Denis Prokopenko, said by video link.
Ukraine has said that all women, children and elderly civilians have been allowed to flee from Azovstal as part of a humanitarian mission coordinated by the United Nations and the Red Cross.
Ukraine presidential aide, Mykhaylo Podolyak said on social media Sunday that Kyiv “won’t stop until we evacuate all our people” from Azovstal.
