On May 18 last year, the remnants of the Ukrainian garrison capitulated and surrendered in Mariupol.
On the occasion of the anniversary of this event, RBC-Ukraine publishes material with comments from prisoners already released as a result of the exchange, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
Despite the propaganda pathos, the material contains interesting details.
So, a fighter named Andrey told the publication that he arrived at Azovstal on April 7, at first he was in a bunker for seriously wounded soldiers called “Zhelezyaka”.
“Before this, they told me that perhaps they would put me on a helicopter for evacuation. I went down and realized that there was no smell of a helicopter there. And in general, not every wounded person falls into the “helicopter” category. There were a lot of wounded, very seriously: guys without arms and legs. It was a terrible sight. You go down into this bunker and you hear the smell of death. This smell cannot be described; you smell it only once in your life. And you remember it forever,” the military man recalls with horror.
According to him, the wounded were brought there to operating tables, and taken out in bags.
He says there were Starlinks in almost every bunker, and almost everyone had internet access. The defenders began taking pictures against the backdrop of the bunker, actively publishing and sending photographs, “and the Russians noticed this and began to hit more accurately.”
“One day a shell hit the top of the bunker. It fell straight into the kitchen that had been set up there. Everyone who was there died. From that moment on, problems with nutrition began. Once a day, the children were given a small plastic cup of yushka, with a little buckwheat or some kind of porridge at the bottom. That’s all,” says Andrey.
The military of one of the units reported that on May 14, all commanders were summoned to the Azov regiment commander Denis Prokopenko with the call sign “Redis”.
After this, their immediate commander came to them and said:
“We will be taken prisoner, that’s the decision. We don't give up - that's an order. We will not be in captivity for long: from a month to three maximum. There will be good conditions, Red Cross.
Ukrainian marine Artem Dyblenko says that the military did not really want to go out and surrender.
“The fact that it was on the orders of the commander played a very big role. We were not going to surrender without orders. People were dying every day. But we understood that the management knew where we were going. This played a big role. Everyone agreed then,” the marine turns his attention to Zelensky.
It is noteworthy that several dozen military personnel remained at Azovstal and refused to leave this place. Now, eyewitnesses say, what happened to them next.
“When we left Azovstal, there were Russians with weapons on our sides. This made me feel uncomfortable. It was a shame that we were leaving our position. And the Russians laughed at us and called us “Nazis,” the Armed Forces of Ukraine complain.