Russian President Vladimir Putin told Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett in a phone call on Thursday that Russia is still keen to offer a safe way out to the besieged civilians at the Azovstal steelworks in the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol.
The Russian government said Putin had spoken to Bennett in a “full exchange of views on the situation in Ukraine” and should order the Ukrainian fighters barricaded at Kiev’s vast Azovstal facility to lay down their arms.
Trapped in the area, Ukrainian soldiers have been battling desperately for weeks, with some civilians using humanitarian corridors to reach safety, while others remain at the steel mill’s premises.
The Kremlin had previously denied that Russian forces had occupied the factory, citing Putin’s order on April 21 that the site be cordoned off and labyrinths of underground tunnels not explored by Russian forces.
The Kremlin memo makes no direct reference to the major diplomatic quarrel that began earlier this week when Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov suggested in a television interview that Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler was of Jewish descent. Israel described the claim as an unforgivable lie about the Holocaust and demanded an apology.
Kremlin, Putin and Bennett, Russia’s World War II. and honor the memory of all the dead, including the victims of the Holocaust”.
source: Noticias
