Mariupol’s last Ukrainian defenders begin to surrender

itself, they had , holding out when most thought it would be impossible. But on May 16th the troops holed up in tunnels beneath the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, a Ukrainian port city, began to capitulate. By the end of the day 264 Ukrainian fighters had surrendered to surrounding Russian units, according to Ukraine’s defence ministry. Of those, 52 were severely wounded and evacuated to a hospital in Russian-occupied territory. Iryna Vereshchuk, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, said they would be exchanged for Russian prisoners of war when their condition stabilises. Whether that will happen is not clear. Nor is the fate of the 212 other Ukrainians who surrendered—or that of the hundreds of fighters, possibly over one thousand, believed still to be inside the plant.The surrender is the closing chapter of one of the most gripping episodes in Russia’s . Mariupol is the biggest city between Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, and the Russian-backed breakaway territories of the in eastern Ukraine. Within a week of their invasion on February 24th, Russian forces besieged Mariupol as part of their drive to establish a land bridge between Crimea and Donbas, thereby cutting Ukraine off from the Azov sea. Mariupol was defended by Ukrainian marines and the Azov battalion, a semi-independent unit of nationalist volunteers. But by April 22nd they had lost control of the city and been forced inside the Azovstal plant.