Russia-Ukraine Conflict: Fight For Port City Mariupol Almost Over As Ukrainian Fighters Surrender At Steel Plant

While Russia has called it as surrender, the Ukrainians avoided using the term and instead said the plant's garrison had successfully completed its mission to tie down Russian forces.

New Delhi: More than 260 Ukrainian fighters surrendered to Russian forces at the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol on Tuesday in a sign that the port is on the verge of falling to the Russians. This would bring an end to the most devastating siege of the port city that lasted for weeks, according to the news agency AP report.

There were growing concerns for the welfare of the Ukrainian fighters who surrendered to Russian forces. All those seriously wounded fighters left the ruins of the Azovstal plant on stretchers and turned themselves over to the Russian side in a deal negotiated by the warring parties, reported AP.

While Russia has called it as surrender, the Ukrainians avoided using the term and instead said the plant's garrison had successfully completed its mission to tie down Russian forces and was under new orders, according to the AP report.

The Russian aggression has caused killing of over 20,000 civilians, according to Ukraine, and left the residents, almost one-quarter of the southern port city's prewar population of 430,000 with little food, water, heat or medicine.

What does Mariupol win mean for Russia?

This fall of Mariupol would make it the biggest captured city by Russian forces and give the Kremlin a badly needed victory, though the landscape has largely been reduced to rubble. Six million refugees have fled Ukraine as the Russian invasion will enter its fourth month soon, and another eight million have been internally displaced, according to UN agencies.

Ukraine would be deprived of a vital port apart from this it will allow Russia to establish a land corridor to the Crimean Peninsula, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014, freeing some of its troops to fight elsewhere in the Donbas, the eastern industrial region which is Kremlin's main objective.

This would give Russia a victory after repeated impediments in the battle and diplomatic front starting with its abortive attempt to capture the capital of Kyiv.

Meanwhile, eight civilians were killed on Tuesday in Russian attacks on 45 settlements in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, informed the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Donetsk regional Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said a Russian airstrike ignited a fire at a building materials plant. In the Luhansk region, Russian soldiers fired rockets on an evacuation bus carrying 36 civilians, but no one was hurt, informed Governor Serhii Haidai.