A view shows destroyed facilities of Azovstal Iron and Steel Works in Mariupol
(Picture: REUTERS)Ukraine has offered to release Russian prisoners of war in exchange for the safe evacuation of injured fighters trapped inside a steel mill in the besieged city of Mariupol.
Iryna Vereshchuk, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, said on Wednesday that her government was negotiating to have the fighters at the Azovstal steel plant released following weeks of bombardment.
She said there were a number of options but “none of them is ideal”. Both sides have exchanged prisoners of war on numerous occasions since the invasion began on February 24.
Russian forces continued to pound the plant on Wednesday with Ukraine’s Azov regiment claiming they had carried out 38 airstrikes in the previous 24 hours.
“Azovstal is on fire again after the bombing. If there is hell on earth, it is there," Petro Andryushchenko, an aide to Mayor Vadym Boichenko, wrote on Telegram on Wednesday.
Ukrainian officials issued dire warnings about the fate of the last fighters in the steelworks, which the city’s mayor said had turned into a “medieval ghetto”.
Human rights ombudswoman Lyudmyla Denisova said the destruction of a makeshift hospital there meant many people were dying.
“The aggressor does not give the wounded military a chance to survive," she wrote on Telegram. “Due to the risk of infection because of a lack of antibiotics, medical instruments and sterile dressings, doctors are forced to amputate the limbs (of the wounded) even with minor injuries.”
She said there were hundreds of wounded among the more than 1,000 fighters estimated to still be in the steel works.
Harrowing photos issued by the Azov forces on Telegram captured the wounded defenders as part of an appeal urging the world to act and evacuate them.
The statement urged “the whole civilised world must see the conditions in which the wounded, crippled defenders of Mariupol are and act.”
"We demand the immediate evacuation of wounded servicemen to Ukrainian-controlled territories, where they will be assisted and provided with proper care," the statement concluded.
An adviser to the Mariupol mayor, Petro Andruishchenko, said Russian forces had blocked all evacuation routes out of the city on Wednesday – shortly after a major civilian evacuation effort led by the United Nations and the Red Cross.
Mr Andriushchenko said some residents who have remained in the city are cooperating with the Russian occupying forces in exchange for food.
