Ukraine is expected to conduct an exchange of Russian prisoners of war for seriously injured soldiers evacuated from the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol late Monday, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister said.
Ms. Iryna Vereshchuk said: “For the sake of saving lives, our 52 seriously injured service members were evacuated yesterday. After their condition stabilizes, we will exchange them for prisoners. Russia’s war,” Iryna Vereshchuk said on Tuesday.
“We are working on the next stages of humanitarian action,” added Vereshchuk.
On Monday, hundreds of people were evacuated from the steel plant, the last holdout in a city that has become a symbol of Ukrainian resistance under relentless Russian bombardment.
What is Russia saying?: Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday that fighters leaving the besieged Azovstal plant will be treated in accordance with international law.
“Chairperson [Vladimir Putin] … ordered the Minister of Defense not to enter Azovstal for humanitarian reasons and announced that both civilians and the military can leave, the army after laying down its arms,” Peskov said. during a routine conference call.
Peskov added that Putin also “ensures that they will be treated in accordance with international law.”
In a statement on Tuesday, the Russian Investigative Committee said investigators would question what it described as “surrendered fighters” who had been evacuated from the Azovstal plant.
“Investigators of the Russian Investigative Committee, as part of the investigation of criminal cases into crimes committed by the Ukrainian regime against civilians in Donbass, will question surrendered gunmen hiding at home. Azovstal machine in Mariupol,” the committee’s brief statement said.
Nearly 600 Ukrainian soldiers at the Azovstal plant laid down their weapons on Monday and Tuesday, and most were loaded onto buses to the town of Orlivka in the Russian-backed Donetsk People’s Republic.
CNN’s Anna Chernova and Uliana Pavlova contributed reporting to this post.
