L’Evacuation of the Azovstal plant continues. Fifty civilians were evacuated thanks to a new convoy on Friday May 6 from the huge Azovstal factory, the last pocket of resistance of Ukrainian forces in Mariupol, a port city besieged by Russian troops, announced Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk.
“Today we managed to get 50 women, children and elderly people out of Azovstal. Tomorrow morning we will continue the evacuation operation,” Iryna Vereshchuk announced on Telegram. She accused the Russian forces of having “constantly violated” the ceasefire decreed by Moscow during the evacuations. “The evacuation was therefore extremely slow,” she said.
Earlier Friday, the Azov regiment, which defends the huge steelworks where the last Ukrainian fighters from Mariupol are entrenched, accused Moscow troops of having targeted one of its cars taking part in the operation to evacuate civilians, killing a soldier. Evacuations are taking place under the aegis of the UN and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and began last weekend, and have allowed nearly 500 civilians to flee, according to Kyiv.
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The UN Security Council on Friday unanimously gave its “strong support” to “the search for a peaceful solution” in Ukraine, in a first show of unity since the beginning of the Russian invasion of this country on February 24. In the declaration drafted by Norway and Mexico which it adopted, the Security Council, of which Russia is a permanent member, recalls that “all Member States are committed, under the Charter of the United Nations, to the obligation to settle their international disputes by peaceful means”.
A city “completely destroyed”
The main body of the UN, which also expresses its “deep concern regarding the maintenance of peace and security in Ukraine”, gives in this regard “firm support” to the Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, ” in the search for a peaceful solution” to this conflict. The UN and the ICRC announced on Thursday afternoon that they had sent a new convoy to Azovstal, where there would still be hundreds of soldiers, many of whom were injured, and dozens of civilians, according to the municipality.
Taking Azovstal would allow Moscow to claim full control of Mariupol, a strategic port at the southern tip of the Donbass which had nearly 500,000 inhabitants before the war but was devastated by two months of siege and bombardment. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky estimated on Friday May 6 that the city of Mariupol was “completely destroyed” and that there was nothing left for Russia to take apart from its steelworks. The Azovstal factory is the city’s last pocket of resistance
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“You have to understand that Mariupol will never fall […], it is already devastated, there is no longer any structure, everything has been completely destroyed, ”replied the head of state during a videoconference organized by the Chatham House think tank in London. “What’s still there is this little structure, the Azovstal steelworks, or what’s left of it,” he added.
Zelensky invites Scholz to Brussels
“People are being evacuated as much as we can,” Volodymyr Zelensky said. ” Yes [les Russes] kill people who can be exchanged as POWs or released as civilians, or helped as wounded, civilians or military, so I don’t think we can have diplomatic talks after that. »
The Ukrainian President also invited German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to kyiv for the ceremonies commemorating the defeat of Nazi Germany on May 9. The Ukrainian believing that this would be a “politically very powerful” visit despite the persistent tensions between their two countries.
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Indeed, last April, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier explained that he wanted to visit the country with his Polish, Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian counterparts. He had to give it up at the last moment, explaining that it was “not wanted”. An event that greatly displeased Berlin. Since then, diplomatic relations between the two countries have been very tense. Pressed for weeks to go to kyiv to show his solidarity with Ukraine, the Chancellor had invoked the incident as an “obstacle”.
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