Beginning Monday, some 300 persons remaining in the Azovstal steel works departed, after arrangements were made between Ukraine and Russia. Russian forces took the wounded to two hospitals some distance to the north and east of Mariupol, and video shows the care for the sticken. Others went elsewhere through the humanitarian corridor. The UN and the International Red Cross were involved. News video shows the buses and medical care used in the evacuation.
The stay and suffering in the complex were prolonged for weeks by Azov and other neo-Nazi militia elements refusing to let people go, with Kiev, Washington, and London cheering them on. Media are quoting an Azov Regiment statement from late Monday asserting grim success, saying that, “The defenders of Mariupol fulfilled the order, despite all the difficulties, and distracted the overwhelming forces of the enemy for 82 days.” President Zelensky is fondly praising “my boys.”
