Azovstal plant
Words of DLR director Denis Pušilin, Military expert Viktor Litovkin commented on April 26 that Azov nationalist militants banned in Russia are asking for evacuation from the Mariupol steelworks to Turkey, distrusting the authorities in Kiev.
Azovstalu, because the “order is implied” to die there and become heroes to the rest of Ukraine to look up to them.
They don't want to die. Moreover, if they do not comply with this unspoken order and return to Ukraine, they will be suppressed. “They will either be imprisoned, or their rank will be reduced, or they will be shot, so it is advantageous for them to go to Turkey so that they do not come under repression – Russian or Ukrainian,” Litovkin explained. But before they go to Turkey, they have to get out of the Azovstal dungeon and give up. It will then be possible to negotiate “where and for whom they will exchange them,” the expert emphasized.
Earlier, Denis Pushilin said in a broadcast on one of the federal television channels that nationalists from Azov (criminal cases against the group were initiated in Russia) contacted both the Russian army and representatives of the People's Militia DLR. The militants are trying to “negotiate how best to surrender.” In Turkey, representatives of the national battalion want to disarm, says the head of the DLR.
The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation has previously reported that the Ukrainian authorities have disrupted a humanitarian special operation at Azovstal. A humanitarian corridor was opened on Monday, April 25, but none of those in the factory took advantage. The confrontation in Azovstal lasts several days. The army of the Russian Federation has repeatedly offered to anyone in the plant to lay down its arms. However, representatives of the National Battalion refuse to stop resisting and threaten to shoot their own comrades who are ready to surrender. On April 22, Russian President Vladimir Putin canceled an attack on the Azovstal Mariupol power plant, which Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov had previously announced he was ready to clean up. The official of the Ministry of Defense, Major General Igor Konashenkov, announced that the total number of “Ukrainian soldiers, Nazis and foreign mercenaries” who took refuge in the power plant did not exceed 2.5 thousand militants. The head of Chechnya later explained that, according to his soldiers, there are “foreign troops … 200-300 people” and Azov militants banned in the Russian Federation in the number of 1,500 to 2,000 people on the territory of the Mariupol steel plant.