A group of soldiers from the Ukrainian Azov battalion said on Wednesday (11) that Pope Francis had decided to intervene to “save the lives” of soldiers stationed for weeks at the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol, which was besieged by the Red Army.
“We ask the Pope to visit Ukraine, talk to (Russian President Vladimir) Putin and tell him to drop them off,” Kateryna Prokopenko, 27-year-old wife of Azov’s battalion commander, Denis Prokopenko, told reporters. Spectators in St. Peter’s Square.
The request to the Pope was made during a five-minute meeting after the end of the general audience due to the traditional greeting to some of those present.
“We hope this meeting will save their lives. We are ready for any gesture from the Pope and his delegation. Our soldiers are ready to lay down their arms in case of evacuation to a third country.”
“We told the Pope that we had 700 wounded soldiers with gangrene and amputations… Many of them died, we failed to bury them,” said 29-year-old Yulia Fedosiuk.
“We ask the Pope to leave a humanitarian corridor so that he can act as a third party and intervene in this war. He said he was praying for us and would do everything he could,” he said.
Also attending the meeting was Russian opposition Piotr Verzilov, co-founder of the Pussy Riot protest group and creator of the Mediazona website, which specializes in tracking legal cases related to the opposition.
According to a Ukrainian government official seeking a way to evacuate the seriously injured, no civilians remained at the steel mill after last week’s evacuations.
The conditions of the army are “terrible”, “no water, no food, no medical equipment”, explains Fedosiuk, fearing that Russian forces will capture, torture and kill them.
According to Kiev, “more than a thousand soldiers” are stationed in the industrial complex, including “hundreds of wounded” in the labyrinth of galleries below the factory.
Considered by some as a neo-Nazi militia and by others as heroes, the controversial Azov battalion was formed in 2014 and is at the center of the propaganda war between Ukraine and Russia. military operation. in the country.
source: Noticias
