“More than a thousand” Ukrainian soldiers, including hundreds of wounded, remain at the Azovstal Steel Plant surrounded by Russian troops in the southeastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol, Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk told AFP.
“There are seriously injured people who need to be evacuated urgently,” added Vereshchuk. She said the situation at the steel mill, the last stronghold of Ukrainian forces fighting the Russian army in Mariupol, a bombingravaged city on the Azov Sea coast, was getting worse by the day.
Vereshchuk denied information released by regional authorities that civilians were still inside the factory.
“It’s not true,” he said. The commander of the Azov Battalion, a unit defending the steel plant, “officially declared to government authorities and a UN official that there are no civilians, women, children or the elderly in Azovstal,” he said.
Currently, the Ukrainian authorities are working to find the best way to evacuate the wounded, medical workers and military chaplains. Kyiv is hoping for help from international organizations and the Turkish government.
“Medical teams want to go out with the injured because they have to accompany them when humanitarian corridors are opened at the steel mill,” said the deputy prime minister.
According to the calculations of the Ukrainian authorities, such an operation will take at least a week due to the number of wounded who have to be transported on stretchers, Vereshchuk said.
She also confirmed that Turkey is cooperating with Ukraine on the operation and is not ruling out the possibility of evacuation by sea, thanks to a boat chartered from Ankara that has medical infrastructure.
In particular, Ukraine wants to ensure that Russia does not fire during the withdrawal, Vereshchuk said.
“We need written guarantees and that’s what we’re trying to get,” he added.