LVIV, Ukraine — As the first Russian soldier to be tried for war crimes pleaded guilty to killing a Ukrainian civilian, fears grew Wednesday over the fate of hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers who surrendered at the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol a day earlier.
Ukrainian officials say they are negotiating to exchange the beleaguered fighters for Russian prisoners of war. But Russia’s parliament is expected to take up a resolution Wednesday blocking the swap, citing the Azov regiment, a former right-wing militia absorbed into Ukraine’s military that Moscow says comprises Nazis. Troops from the regiment held out in the steel plant for weeks in a last stand against a complete Russian takeover of Mariupol.
Their fate was left hanging even as 21-year-old Russian Sgt. Vadim Shyshimarin pleaded guilty in Kyiv in the fatal shooting of a Ukrainian man in the northeastern Sumy region Feb. 28, four days after Russian forces swept into Ukraine. Shyshimarin, who could be sentenced to life in prison, shot the unarmed man in the head.
