Mariupol steel plant siege ends, 265 Ukraine fighters surrender

MARIUPOL, May 17

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More than 250 Ukrainian fighters have surrendered after weeks holed up in the labyrinth of bunkers and tunnels below Mariupol’s Azovstal steelworks as the most devastating siege of Russia’s war in Ukraine draws to a close.

Russian forces pummelled Mariupol, a major port on the Sea of Azov between Russia and Crimea, with artillery for weeks while some of the fiercest urban warfare of the conflict left much of the city a wasteland.

Civilians and hundreds of Ukrainian fighters, many of them from the Azov Regiment, sought refuge in the Azovstal works, a vast Soviet-era plant founded under Josef Stalin and designed with a maze of bunkers and tunnels to withstand nuclear attack. Russia’s Defence Ministry said 265 Ukrainian fighters had surrendered, including 51 who were seriously wounded and would be treated at Novoazovsk in the Russian-backed breakaway Donetsk region.

Ukraine’s military command had said in the early hours of Tuesday that the mission to defend the steel plant was over. — Reuters

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