KYIV (Reuters) -The commander of Ukraine’s Azov Regiment said in a video statement published on Friday that civilians and heavily wounded Ukrainian fighters had been evacuated from the Azovstal steelworks in the devastated city of Mariupol.
“We have constantly emphasised the three most important conditions for us: civilians, wounded and dead,” Denys Prokopenko, the commander, said in the video shared by the Azov Regiment on the Telegram messaging service.
“The civilians have been evacuated. The heavily wounded received the necessary assistance and they were evacuated, to be later exchanged and delivered to territory controlled by Ukraine,” Prokopenko said.
Prokopenko said the process of removing the dead from the Azovstal plant, the last bastion of Ukrainian resistance against Russian forces in Mariupol, was still under way. “I hope that in the near future, relatives and Ukraine will be able to bury their soldiers with honor,” he said.
(Reporting by Natalia Zinets and Pavel PolityukWriting by Tom Balmforth and Alexander WinningEditing by William Maclean)
