While Mariupol is about to fall into Russian hands, Kyiv is trying to find solutions to save “civilians and soldiers”. Ukraine therefore offered Russia a special negotiation session in the besieged port city on the Azov Sea on Wednesday.
We are ready to hold a special negotiation session in Mariupol. To save our boys (the battalion) Azov, soldiers, civilians, children, living and wounded. All, Mikhailo Podolyak, adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, wrote on his Twitter account. “We are always ready to come to these negotiations with Mykhailo Podolyak as soon as we receive confirmation from the Russian side,” Ukraine’s chief negotiator David Arakhamia said on his Telegram channel.
The Russians are “ten times more numerous than” the Ukrainian soldiers
After weeks of fighting, Russian forces have further intensified their attacks on the city, making the situation for Ukrainians increasingly complicated. The enemy outnumbers us ten times, said Mariupol Serguiï Volyna of the 36th Marine Infantry Brigade. According to President Zelenskyy, Ukrainian soldiers holed up in the huge steel complex of Azovstal, the city’s last island of resistance, “are protecting around a thousand civilians, women and children at the cost of their lives (…).
For his part, Sviatoslav Palamar, deputy commander of the Azov battalion, one of the two Ukrainian formations still resisting Mariupol, underlined in a video message on Telegram on Wednesday that the situation at the factory, which is being fired Super by Russian aviation, “critical” is powerful bombs”. He urged international leaders to “first and foremost” save the civilians at the factory. The humanitarian corridor from Mariupol, the first since Saturday, did not work, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said in the evening, accusing the Russians of violating the ceasefire and blocking the cars.