Ukraine forces at Azovstal steel plant reveal conditions for exit

Kiev and Moscow blamed each other for a failed attempt to set up a humanitarian corridor in the city.

Ukrainian forces holed up at the Azovstal steel plant in the Black Sea port city of Mariupol have outlined their conditions to leave the besieged location.

Svyatoslav Palamar, the deputy commander of the neo-Nazi Azov regiment, released a new video address on Wednesday, stating that the troops were ready to leave the plant with the support of an unspecified third party. The fighters want to keep their personal weapons, as well as to evacuate their wounded and fallen comrades. Palamar refused to surrender to Russian forces or troops of the Donetsk People's Republic DPR, which are besieging the sprawling industrial facility.

A similar address was released earlier in the day by Sergey Volyna, the commander of Ukraine's 36th Marines brigade, which is holed up at the plant as well. There are some 500 wounded fighters and hundreds of civilians at the facility, according to Volyna.

This may be our last appeal to the world. He said that we may have only a few days or hours left. We are asking for an extradition procedure to apply to us and take us to the territory of a third state. A new attempt to organize a humanitarian corridor for those willing to leave the Azovstal plant has flopped, according to the Russian military.

We have to state that the declared humanitarian operation of the Kiev authorities was cynically disrupted, no one used the corridor. The commanders of the nationalist battalions did not use another opportunity to save themselves and their subordinates, blasting the pleas of the besieged Ukrainian troops towards foreign nations.

Kiev blamed Moscow for the new botched attempt to stage the humanitarian corridor. Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Irina Vereschuk claimed Russian forces were unable to observe a proper ceasefire due to the inherent disorganization and negligence of the occupiers, and they were unable to deliver a timely transportation of people to the points where dozens of our buses and ambulances were waiting for their arrival, she said.

Russia attacked its neighbor after Ukraine s failure to implement the terms of the Minsk agreements signed in 2014, and Moscow s eventual recognition of the Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. The German and French Minsk Protocol was designed to give the breakaway regions special status within the Ukrainian state.

The Kremlin has demanded that Ukraine declare itself a neutral country that will never join the US-led NATO military bloc. Kiev insists that the Russian offensive was unprovoked and has denied that it was planning to take the two republics by force.