Ongoing Surrender From Mariupol's Azovstal Steel Plant: 'Far Bigger Scale Than Kyiv Has Acknowledged

Ongoing Surrender "On Far Bigger Scale Than Kyiv Has Acknowledged" At Azovstal

TYLER DURDEN

Russia's defense ministry has now revised the numbers of Ukrainian fighters to have emerged from the besieged Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol upward to more than 1,700 soldiers that have left the plant. A new Reuters headline has stressed that there's ongoing "silence from Kyiv" as the surrender is on a much larger than expected scale:

Moscow said on Thursday that 1,730 Ukrainian fighters had surrendered in Mariupol over three days, including 771 in the past 24 hours, claiming a surrender on a far bigger scale than Kyiv has acknowledged since ordering its garrison to stand down.

Statements from early in the week by Ukrainian officials, including President Zelensky, attempted to downplay this as "surrender" - avoiding the word altogether and instead stressing the end of the "combat mission" and that its Azov fighters were "evacuated".

Russian-backed separatists in control of the area, Denis Pushilin, has recently said many of Azov's top commanders still remain inside the huge, cavernous steelworks facility.

Reuters observes, "The ultimate outcome of Europe’s bloodiest battle for decades remained publicly unresolved, with no confirmation of the fate of the hundreds of Ukrainian troops who had held out in a vast steelworks at the end of a near three-month siege."

"Ukraine, which says it aims to secure a prisoner swap, has declined to say how many were inside the plant or comment on the fate of the rest, since confirming that just over 250 had surrendered in the initial hours after it ordered them to yield," the report added.

Meanwhile, a report from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) suggests that indeed the number of fighters which were hold up at the plant for months is likely significantly higher that what was known. The Red Cross has thus far registered "hundreds"...

On Tuesday the ICRC started "to register combatants leaving the Azovstal plant, including the wounded, at the request of the parties," it said in a statement from its headquarters in Geneva.

"The operation continued Wednesday and was still ongoing Thursday," it added.