“They bomb every day”: the wives of soldiers stranded in the Azovstal factory testify – BFMTV

Yulia Fedosluk, Denys Prokopenko arrived in France this Friday. Their husband, two soldiers from the Azov regiment, are among the thousands of soldiers stranded in the Azovstal factory in Mariupol. Kataryna Prokopenko has not seen her husband since February 14. Ten days later, this soldier from the Azov regiment left to fight against the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Two and a half months later, he is one of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers stranded in the Azovstal steelworks, in Mariupol, in the south-east of Ukraine. “The Russians are bombing the factory every day”, testifies his wife, who explains that she can communicate with her husband once a week. “He tells us that there are many serious injuries. They are close to death if they are not evacuated”, she continues. “Because, in these conditions, an injury becomes fatal…” Water shortage “My husband wrote to me a few days ago asking me to look for scientific articles that explain how to survive without water”, testifies to his side Yulia Fedosluk, in the same situation as Kataryna Prokopenko. “The stranded soldiers will soon run out of water. My husband already only drinks a glass of water, not necessarily drinkable, a day.” They cannot surrender. They cannot be taken prisoner by the Russians They would be beaten, tortured”, continues Yulia Fedosluk. Faced with the situation, the two women are calling for help from the international community. Before their arrival in France this Friday, they met Pope Francis in Germany. They called on the sovereign pontiff to take a stand for the establishment of a humanitarian corridor aimed at evacuating the soldiers still present in the steelworks. On Tuesday, the Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister assured that the authorities were working on the possibility of evacuate wounded soldiers, medical personnel and military chaplains from the steel plant, hoping for help from international organizations and Turkey. According to her, such an operation could “last at least a week” given the number of wounded who must be “carried on stretchers”.