A boy rides a bike on a street in Mariupol. File photoMOSCOW, April 28Vladimir Zelensky said at a press conference with UN Secretary General António Guterres that Ukraine is ready for immediate negotiations on the evacuation of people from the territory of Azovstal in Mariupol. «Ukraine is ready to immediately begin negotiations on the evacuation of people from Mariupol and counts on the support of the UN,» Zelensky said.The UN announced the creation of a team to evacuate civilians from Azovstal Earlier, Guterres noted that the UN was discussing the details of the evacuation of civilians from Mariupol. He also said that he had discussed with Zelensky the issue of evacuating civilians from Azovstal. On Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin held talks with Guterres. The official representative of the Secretary General, Stefan Dujarric, said that Putin agreed to the participation of the UN and the ICRC in the evacuation of civilians from the Azovstal plant in Mariupol. Later, the press secretary of the President of the Russian Federation, Dmitry Peskov, said that there were no specific agreements on involving the UN and the ICRC in the evacuation at the meeting. same year, the Ukrainian security forces regained control of Mariupol. On March 7, 12 days after the start of the Russian special operation to demilitarize Ukraine, the deputy commander of the Vostok battalion, Alexander Semyonov, announced that the city was surrounded, and a cleansing of its individual districts had begun. On April 16, the official representative of the Russian Defense Ministry, Igor Konashenkov, announced that the entire city territory had been cleared of the Ukrainian army, foreign mercenaries and neo-Nazis from the Azov regiment (against whose militants a criminal case was initiated in Russia). The remnants of the Ukrainian group are blocked at the Azovstal metallurgical plant.
The West has seen the true face of Ukraine. And he liked it. Russia launched a military operation in Ukraine on February 24. President Vladimir Putin called its goal «the protection of people who have been subjected to bullying and genocide by the Kyiv regime for eight years.» For this, according to him, it is planned to carry out «demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine», to bring to justice all war criminals responsible for «bloody crimes against civilians» in Donbass. According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, the Armed Forces strike only at military infrastructure and Ukrainian troops and , on March 25, completed the main tasks of the first stage — significantly reduced the combat potential of Ukraine. The main goal in the Russian military department was called the liberation of Donbass.
