This is undoubtedly the end of a bloody siege.

More than 260 Ukrainian fighters, including 53 wounded, were evacuated Monday evening from the Azovstal steelworks, the last bastion of Ukrainian resistance in Mariupol.

In the process, the Ukrainian general staff announced the end of the "combat mission" in the strategic port city, now controlled by Russia.

“On May 16, 53 seriously injured people were evacuated from Azovstal to Novoazovsk for medical assistance and 211 others were transported to Olenivka through a humanitarian corridor,” Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Ganna Malyar announced in a video.

These two localities are located in territory controlled by Russian and pro-Russian forces in eastern Ukraine, but Ganna Malyar specified that the fighters must in the future be repatriated to territory controlled by Ukraine, "within the framework of an exchange procedure.

"Save Our Guys"

“The Mariupol garrison has accomplished its combat mission,” the Ukrainian General Staff said in a statement, indicating that it had ordered commanders in Azovstal to “save the lives of their personnel”.

“Rescue activities of the defenders who remain on the territory of Azovstal continue,” the statement continued, without specifying how many Ukrainian soldiers remained on the spot.

“The defenders of Mariupol are heroes of our time.

They are forever in history.

»

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, for his part, said in a video that the main thing was to “save the lives of our guys”.

“I want to emphasize this: Ukraine needs its living heroes.

This is our principle,” he added.

Probably several hundred soldiers remaining

Last week, the Ukrainian authorities said that more than 1,000 Ukrainian soldiers - including 600 wounded, according to one of their commanders - were still present in the underground galleries of this huge steelworks, which has become a symbol of Ukrainian resistance to the Russian invasion. launched on February 24.

They had taken refuge in Azovstal after having suffered for more than a month the siege of Mariupol, a strategic port in the south-east of Ukraine attacked by the Russian army at the start of the war and today totally devastated.

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