Ukrainian fighters from Mariupol consider leaving under conditions The last Ukrainian fighters from Mariupol refuse to surrender, but ask the international community for “security guarantees”, at a time when Russian forces plan to seize the entire city strategic area of southeastern Ukraine. “We are ready to leave Mariupol with the help of a third party”, armed with weapons, “in order to save the people who have been entrusted to us”, said this morning on Telegram, Sviatoslav Palamar, deputy commander of the Azov Battalion. Several hundred civilians, lacking food and water, are entrenched in the Azovstal steel and metallurgical plant with the Ukrainian army’s 36th battalion and the Azov regiment, the last two combat units in Mariupol, according to the authorities Ukrainians. Sviatoslav Palamar called on the “civilized world” to vouch for “security guarantees”, while assuring that the two battalions did not accept “the conditions of the Russian Federation concerning the surrender of arms and the capture of our defenders “. “The situation is difficult, even critical”, he continued, in this huge factory, the last island of resistance in this port at the southern end of the Donbass, where “about a thousand civilians, women and children”, and “hundreds of injured”, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The civilians trapped inside the factory, the number of which could not be independently confirmed, “are afraid because of the constant shelling”, adds Commander Palamar, pleading for a ceasefire. Earlier, kyiv had made a proposal. “We are ready to hold a ‘special negotiating session’ in Mariupol. To save our boys, [le bataillon] Azov, soldiers, civilians, children, living and wounded. Everyone”, implored Wednesday evening, on Twitter, Mykhaïlo Podoliak, adviser to the Ukrainian presidency and one of the negotiators with Russia. Moscow, which has issued several ultimatums to the defenders of Mariupol, is determined to take this port which would allow it to connect Crimea, which it annexed in 2014, and the pro-Russian separatist republics of Donbass.