The “disorganized occupants” were unable to get people to the point in the agreed time “where our buses and ambulances were waiting,” Wereshchuk said. This Thursday there should be another attempt to bring people from the embattled port city to the Zaporizhia area safely.
According to its chief negotiator Mikhail Podoliak, Ukraine is ready for extraordinary negotiations with Russia in Mariupol without any preconditions. It can be called two-way or four-way. “So that our boys can be saved, the Azov regiment, the military, civilians, children, the living and the wounded,” tweeted Podoliak, referring to the fighting in the port city.
The Russian Defense Ministry announced in the evening that no one had left the steelworks down the hall. The fighters had already been asked to lay down their weapons and go into Russian captivity. They refuse. Meanwhile, pro-Russian separatists in the Donetsk region said nearly 130 civilians managed to escape from a residential area on the outskirts of the embattled steelworks.
“The enemy continues the bombing, so our civilians cannot safely leave the territory,” Azov regiment deputy commander Svyatoslav Palamar said in a video message. He called on the enemy to keep the promised ceasefire.
Mariupol has been completely surrounded by Russian troops since the beginning of March. Of the 440,000 inhabitants, more than 100,000 are still in the largely destroyed city. Several attempts to evacuate the largely destroyed city failed.
According to his own statements, the Russian military bombed 1,053 Ukrainian military sites on Wednesday night. The Russian Defense Ministry announced on Wednesday that 106 gun stations had been destroyed.
EU Council President Charles Michel paid a surprise visit to Kiev. Russian forces are trying to breach Ukrainian defenses in eastern Ukraine, British military intelligence said in a new situation report. According to an aide to President Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukrainian troops stopped the advance on the city of Sloviansk.
Especially in view of the material battle that is now starting in eastern Ukraine, Western countries such as the US, Britain, Germany and France agreed on Tuesday to supply Ukraine with heavier weapons as well. Norway announced that it would deliver 100 Mistral anti-aircraft missiles. The weapons have already been shipped, the Norwegian Ministry of Defense said.
Russian troops invaded Ukraine on February 24. The Moscow government describes its actions as a special operation to demilitarize and denazify the neighboring country. She denies accusations of attacking civilians. Western states, on the other hand, speak of a war of Russian aggression and crimes against the Ukrainian civilian population. According to the United Nations, more than five million people have fled Ukraine since the Russian invasion began.