Russia refuses to negotiate release of troops from Azovstal Steelworks

When Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, Russia’s top negotiator Vladimir Medinsky said in a telegram today that “turning Azov war criminals into objects of political negotiation is a slander against the history of 1941,” the Efe news agency was quoted as saying.

Medinsky considered it wrong and inappropriate to compare Azovstel with the resistance of the defenders of Fortress Brest (Belarus) in the face of Hitler troops advancing.

The Russian negotiator questioned whether the Soviets used human shields, shot civilians in the back, exchanged civilians for food and medicine, or agreed to withdraw to other countries promising not to fight the enemy.

Speaking of war crimes, Medinsky refers to it as “genocide” which he calls Moscow, which was carried out by the Ukrainian military against Donbass civilians for the past eight years.

Russian President Vladimir Putin used the country’s “denunciation” as an argument when announcing Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine, calling the neo-Nazis “bastards.”

Turkey is ready to welcome the militants in the steel company in the port of Mariupol (Sea of ​​Azov), more than a thousand of them wounded.

A group of family members of the militants, mostly women, traveled to Turkey to meet with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose country held talks between Kiev and Moscow.

This week, former Ukrainian presidents Leonid Kuchma, Viktor Yuchenko and Pedro Poroshenko called on the international community to protect those still in the Azovstal factory as civilians.

In a letter, the former head of state asked for help “with all available diplomatic resources”, saying that Kiev authorities were trying to save Ukrainian civilians and soldiers at the behest of Russia. [Presidente russo Vladimir] Putin, with barbaric methods on the Azovstal campus.

Despite Putin’s order to stop the attack on the unit, according to Ukrainian officials, the bombing was serious.

According to Councilor Mariupol, Russian soldiers used white phosphorus bombs in the fight for control of the city in the Donetsk region, according to the Telegram.