Latest appeal from Azovstal: "Save the Mariupol garrison. Apply the extraction procedure"

Acting Commander of the 36th Separate Marine Brigade Serhiy Volyna recorded another appeal from Mariupol, which the occupiers had kept under siege since the beginning of the war. He asked that the extraction procedure be applied to the Mariupol garrison and civilians hiding at Azovstal.Volyna reminded that the defenders of Mariupol have been fighting in full siege for 62 days. More than 600 soldiers are wounded and need medical care. However, at the Azovstal plant, where they are currently located, they lack the necessary conditions, drugs, and personnel.

Hundreds of civilians, including people with disabilities and the wounded, together with the city defenders, stay in conditions of a humanitarian catastrophe. Mariupol has almost completely been wiped off the face of the earth. Many civilians have already died.

"I appealed to all world leaders, diplomats, Pope Francis – shouted as loud as I could to be heard so that the extraction procedure was applied to us… Save the Mariupol garrison. Use the extraction procedure. Today is not 1940. Today is 2022. People will simply die here. The wounded and the alive will die in this battle," the commander of the Ukrainian Marines said.

Volyna referred to the example of the events in Dunkirk during World War II, when after the breakthrough of the Maginot Line in May 1940 and the capitulation of the Netherlands, part of the British Expeditionary Force under Lord John Gort, French units, 16th Corps, and the remnants of Belgian troops were trapped near the city of Dunkirk.

Allied troops were trapped on the coast at risk of disaster, but Hitler ordered a halt to the tank offensive. Hitler ordered "not to approach Dunkirk closer than 10 km" and not to use tanks against the blocked group.

In a famous speech in 1940, Winston Churchill called the events in Dunkirk a "miraculous liberation." Churchill directed his praise to a rescue operation in which 338,226 French and British soldiers were evacuated from the coast and harbor of Dunkirk, France.

During a tete-a-tete meeting in Moscow on 26 April, Putin and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres discussed Mariupol-related proposals for humanitarian aid and the evacuation of civilians from conflict zones.

At the end of the meeting, Guterres' spokesman said that Putin had agreed to evacuate civilians from Azovstal.

Today, Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that at the meeting with the Secretary-General, "there were no specific agreements on assistance in the evacuation of civilians from Azovstal."