Russia said Tuesday that 265 Ukrainian soldiers holed up in Mariupol’s besieged Azovstal steel plant had “surrendered,” contradicting Kyiv’s account that the evacuated soldiers would be exchanged later.

“The surrender of fighters from the Azov nationalist unit and Ukrainian servicemen blocked in the Azovstal plant in Mariupol began yesterday,” the R

President Vladimir Putin is involved in Russia’s push to capture eastern Ukraine on a tactical level, British media reported Monday, citing unnamed western military sources.

Russian forces are currently attempting to encircle cities under Kyiv’s control in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions after abandoning their initial plan to seize the Ukrainian c

Ukrainian authorities said a rescue mission to extract the last defenders of the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol was under way on Tuesday, after hundreds of soldiers were evacuated in an earlier operation.

The factory complex had become a symbol of resistance, with around 600 soldiers holed up in underground tunnels and bunkers fighting a