By KYIV. May 12 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Coordinator of actions on humanitarian corridors from the President’s Office, Tetiana Lomakina, said that negotiations on the evacuation of medics and wounded from the territory of the Azovstal metallurgical plant in the temporarily besieged Mariupol (Donetsk region) are continuing.
"Negotiations are underway on an important second stage of the humanitarian operation to rescue medical workers and the wounded. This is about 500 people. And also about the opening of humanitarian corridors that Mariupol residents need. And there are still about 100,000 people in the city. They are mostly elderly people, women and children," Lomakina said during a briefing at the media center Ukraine on Thursday.
She recalled that earlier, with the support of the UN and the Red Cross, about 300 people were evacuated from Azovstal.
In turn, Deputy Prime Minister for the Reintegration of Temporarily Occupied Territories of Ukraine Iryna Vereschuk later clarified that at the moment there are negotiations on the evacuation of only 38 seriously wounded servicemen from the territory of the plant.
"Now we are negotiating only about 38 seriously wounded (bedridden) fighters. We work step by step. We will exchange 38 heavy ones, then we will move on. Now there are no negotiations on the exchange of 500 or 600 people, as reported by some media," Vereschuk wrote on Telegram on Thursday.
The Minister called on politicians, journalists and public figures to refrain from commenting on the content of the negotiations, as they not only misinform and disorient society, but also harm the negotiation process.
"I’m really asking. It’s about people’s lives. Refrain from making public comments about what you don’t know. If everything works out and we get people out, then do what you want. And now I ask you to be responsible and not to interfere," Vereschuk summed up.
