Russia-Ukraine war live updates: Kharkiv missile strike is ‘absolute evil,’ Zelensky says
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Friday that a “very large number” of Ukraine’s pilots were killed trying to defend Mariupol against Russian forces.
Speaking on a national telethon, Zelensky referenced the high death toll that Ukrainian forces faced in the battered port city of Mariupol. Ukraine evacuated its remaining combatants from the city earlier this week, ending its last stand to prevent Russia from capturing the strategic port city after weeks of heavy Russian bombardment.
“A very large number of people, our pilots, died, unfortunately,” he said, according to Interfax. “Absolutely heroic people who knew that it was difficult, that it was almost impossible to fly. Fly to Azovstal, bring medicine, food, water, pick up the bodies of the wounded. All this happened.”
Earlier in the day, Denys Prokopenko, a leader of the far-right Azov Regiment, said an order has been issued to cease in the group’s last-ditch defense of Mariupol, which has been gutted by the Russian military, and that the effort will now focus on saving lives and removing the dead. Hundreds of fighters, many of them seriously wounded, had been hiding in Mariupol’s sprawling Azovstal Iron and Steel Works and its network of tunnels.
Zelensky said Friday that some of the pilot losses in Mariupol were due to Russian air forces providing no air corridors, according to Interfax.