Turkey Proposes Sea Evacuation of Wounded Ukrainian Soldiers from Mariupol

Turkey had proposed evacuating by sea wounded fighters holed up in a steelworks in the southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol, a spokesman and top foreign policy adviser for Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday. Reuters reported that Ibrahim Kalin said he personally discussed the proposal with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv two weeks ago, but that Moscow has not agreed to the plan. Kalin said that according to the plan, people evacuated from the Azovstal steel plant would be taken by land to the port of Berdyansk, on the Sea of Azov, and that a Turkish ship would take them from there to Istanbul via the Black Sea. “Our ship is ready to go and bring the injured soldiers and other civilians to Turkey,” Reuters quoted Kalin as saying. There was no comment on the plan from Ukraine or Russia. Though Mariupol has fallen to Russia, hundreds of Ukrainian fighters are holding out under heavy fire at the steelworks. Earlier this month, the International Committee of the Red Cross and the United Nations helped evacuated a number of civilians who were sheltering in the plant.