On Friday, the commander of the Ukrainian army, Denis Prokopenko, announced in a video message that the last Ukrainian soldiers stationed at the Azofestal steel plant in Mariupol had received an order from Kyiv to “stop defending the city.”
“The Supreme Military Command ordered to save the lives of the soldiers … to stop defending the city,” said Prokopenko, a commander of the Azov Battalion, a Ukrainian unit at the plant.
The Azofestal steel plant is the last stronghold of the Ukrainian resistance in Mariupol, which was almost completely destroyed by Russian forces.
On Friday, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said that 1,908 Ukrainian soldiers who had been detained for weeks at the Azofestal steel plant in Mariupol had surrendered.
“The nationalists trapped in the factory began to surrender. At present, 1,908 people have laid down their arms,” he said.
A report released by the British Ministry of Defense on Friday states that Russian leaders will come under increasing pressure to deploy troops from the strategic port city of Mariupol in the south to step up their attacks in eastern Ukraine, after a number of defenders They are stuck in Mariupol steel. The plant shrank
The British Ministry of Defense said in a daily intelligence report that in the event of a power plant collapse, Russia would likely use the city’s forces to bolster operations in other areas of the Donbass industrial zone, but would complicate or prolong the maneuver.
The Russian minister confirmed that on May 8, the Ukrainians tried to seize Snake Island, a strategic point in the Black Sea that the Russians had seized at the beginning of the war. But the Ukrainians were not successful.
Stressing that Russian forces had killed 50 elite Ukrainian soldiers, he said: “On the eve of Day D, the Ukrainian authorities embarked on an adventure to seize Snake Island … This was a dubious complete defeat. It destroyed four planes, ten helicopters, 30 drones and three ships.
Source: Lebanon Debate
