Russia announced the surrender of about 1,000 Ukrainian soldiers who have been trapped inside the Azovstal industrial complex in the city of Mariupol since Monday, and released a video that it said showed the surrendered fighters being transferred to a hospital in the breakaway region of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine.

The Russian Defense Ministry said that Ukrainian soldiers holed up inside the huge Azovstal steel industry complex continued to surrender to Russian forces, and that the number of surrendering reached 993 soldiers since last Monday, while Kyiv is silent about the fate of these soldiers.

Today, Wednesday, the Russian Defense Ministry released a video recording that it said showed the surrendered fighters receiving treatment and medical care in a hospital in the town of Novoazovsk in the "Donetsk Republic".

The leaders did not give up

Denis Pushilin, the head of the so-called "Donetsk Republic" announced that the fate of the Ukrainian militants and fighters who surrendered in the Azovstal complex would be determined by the court.

And local media quoted Pushilin as saying that the leaders of the Ukrainian forces in Azovstal had not yet surrendered.


And Russian media reported that convoys of 8 buses carried a new batch of Ukrainian forces that surrendered in the Azovstal complex and left the city of Mariupol in southeastern Ukraine on Tuesday.

For his part, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Russia launched raids on several cities to cover up what he called "a series of failures of its army in the east and south," noting that the evacuation of fighters from the Azovstal industrial zone in Mariupol was continuing "under the supervision of our army and intelligence officers and the most important international mediators."

Meanwhile, Mariupol mayor Vadim Boychenko accused separatist forces in Donetsk of planning to demolish the Azovstal complex.

Boychenko added that the Russian forces destroyed the largest part of the city and burned it because of what he described as brutality, hatred and Russian anger at Mariupol, as he put it.

For his part, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said that the relevant authorities have done everything they can to remove their forces from the Azovstal complex, and that the priority now is to preserve their lives.


In other field developments, the Ukrainian spokesman said that Russian ships in the Black Sea are carrying out espionage operations and are preparing to use cruise missiles (winged), noting that Russia is trying to strengthen its forces from other countries, including Syria.

Trial in Kyiv

Meanwhile, a court in Kyiv convened today to begin hearings in the first trial of a Russian soldier accused of war crimes since the start of the Russian war on Ukraine on February 24.

The soldier, Vadim Shishimarin, 21, who was accused by Ukrainian prosecutors of killing a civilian, pleaded guilty and confessed to all the facts attributed to him.

The prosecution says that Shishimarin - a tank commander arrested by the Ukrainian authorities - killed a 62-year-old civilian in the village of Chubakhivka in northeastern Ukraine on February 28.

If convicted by the court, he could be sentenced to life imprisonment.

Kyiv accuses Russian forces of committing atrocities against civilians during the war, and said that it has detected more than 10,000 possible war crimes, but Russia denies targeting civilians or being involved in war crimes and accuses Kyiv of fabricating these accusations to discredit its forces.