Giada Oricchio May 20, 2022
“Zelensky has received serious threats”. The Mystery of Surrender-Non-Surrender Azov battalion is one of the themes of the episode of “Half past eight“, Friday May 20th. During the La7 talks, Lesia Vasylenko, a member of the Ukrainian Parliament, argued that there is no white flag and that there is no uprising by the Azov Battalion, still barricaded at the Azovstal Steel Works in Mariupol, on President Volodymyr’s orders to surrender Zelensky.
“The commander stays inside because it is his duty to ensure that everyone can get out – said Vasylenko -. The military obeys the order, it takes a long time for all the people to come out. We are absolutely not talking about surrender. They are heroes who resisted to the end to defend this last bastion of democracy”.
A version that did not convince Lucio Caracciolo, head of the geopolitical magazine “Limes”. As former Interior Minister Marco Minniti noted, the position is extremely delicate, according to Caracciolo Zelenskyy: “There is very strong tension between the commanders and some Azov fighters who feel abandoned by the government. They even threatened reprisals against the President himself and others.”
In addition, the slow evacuation of the steel mill encounters another difficulty: the lack of coordination between the Russian and Ukrainian generals, who are unable to establish real humanitarian corridors. “The phone calls these days between Russians and Americans are aimed at establishing a minimum of dialogue on the ground,” Caracciolo said, before endorsing a truth the Ukrainian MP doesn’t like: “Of course I don’t know how to define the soldiers , who go out of the Azov valley without a fight, but from a practical point of view it is a surrender”.
