Russia announces new evacuation attempt for Azovstal plant
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The Russian military will suspend operations at the besieged facility for three days in order to allow residents to be evacuated.
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Azovstal plant in Mariupol (TASS)
The Russian military has declared a fresh unilateral pause in its operation at the Azovstal steelworks complex in Mariupol, offering to provide humanitarian corridors for people who are believed to have been trapped within the site for three days. The steel factory is the city's final stronghold controlled by the Ukrainian military and members of the neo-Nazi Azov battalion.
The humanitarian corridor will be available for three days, from Thursday to Saturday, from 8 AM to 6 PM Moscow time. Civilians evacuated from the facility will be able to move wherever they choose, including territory controlled by Ukraine or Russia. Several hundred residents were evacuated from Azovstal bunkers on Sunday as part of a humanitarian mission coordinated by the United Nations and the International Red Cross.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov explained that “There is no assault. We see that flare-ups occur when militants get out to assume gun emplacements. These attempts are being suppressed quite promptly."
The Kremlin denied on Wednesday that Russia was attacking the Azovstal steel mill in Mariupol after Ukraine accused Moscow of launching a "powerful" assault on the industrial zone where Kiev's military is stationed.
"The order was publicly given by the supreme commander-in-chief to call off the assault," Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters, referring to an order given by President Vladimir Putin last month not to pursue an attack on the area. "There is no storming," Peskov said.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Sunday that Ukraine's "hysterical" desire to take militants out of Mariupol's Azovstal plant is related to the fact that these militants can confirm the presence of active officers, as well as mercenaries, from Western armies.
"The situation with the confrontation at the Azovstal plant in Mariupol and the persistent, even hysterical desire of Zelenskyy, his team, and his Western patrons to achieve the withdrawal of all these people and send them to the territory of Ukraine is due to the fact that there are many characters who will confirm the presence of mercenaries, maybe acting officers of Western armies on the side of Ukrainian radicals," Lavrov told Italian broadcaster Mediaset.
