The commander of the few remaining Ukrainian troops in the war-torn city of Mariupol announced on Wednesday that his soldiers are vastly outgunned and may only have hours to live, NBC News reported.
Approximately 500 wounded soldiers and civilians are barricaded in the Azovstal steel plant, which is being used as a last bastion to defend the city against Russian troops.
Major Serhiy Volyna described how his 36th Marine Brigade have been holding out inside the plant along with fighters from the far right Azov Battalion.
Volyna shared a video with news outlets on Wednesday in which he explained the dire situation the fighters are facing inside the plant and begged foreign leaders for help. He also shared it on his Facebook page, tagging world leaders including U.S. President Joe Biden, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
“We are probably facing our last days, if not hours,” he said.
“We appeal and plead to all world leaders to help us. We ask them to use the procedure of extraction and take us to the territory of a third-party state,” he said.
Ukraine on Sunday vowed to fight to the end in Mariupol, after a Russian ultimatum expired for remaining forces to surrender in port city where Moscow is pushing for a major strategic victory, AFP reported.
"The city still has not fallen," Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said hours after Moscow's deadline had passed for fighters holed up and surrounded in a sprawling fortress-like steelworks to surrender.
"There's still our military forces, our soldiers. So they will fight to the end," he stated in an interview with ABC's "This Week.”