MOSCOW, April 28. /TASS/. A retired Canadian army general whom the UN is trying to rescue may be holed up in the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, Spokesman for the People’s Militia of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) Eduard Basurin said on Thursday.
"Information appeared now and then that one of former Canadian army generals may be holed up there [in the Azovstal steel complex]. He first seemed to get out of sight and then the Canadian Defense Ministry issued a statement that this general gave a notice that he was resigning from the army and moving to Ukraine. Perhaps, it [the UN] is trying to rescue him," the spokesman said in a live broadcast on Channel One.
A group that the UN is preparing for the evacuation of civilians from Azovstal pursues the goal of rescuing "active NATO military personnel who may be entrenched there," Basurin said.
Documents evidencing "the genocide and killings of civilians" by the Ukrainian military and the facts of "some experiments on people" could also be present at the Azovstal steel plant, the spokesman said.
"They are afraid that these documents could be made public so that the entire world can see what state they were creating," Basurin said.
At a meeting with Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin handed down a directive calling off a looming assault on Azovstal as inexpedient and ordered that the industrial zone there be tightly sealed off so that even a fly "couldn’t get through."
The battles for Mariupol, a port city in southeastern Ukraine, erupted on February 25. By now, Ukrainian nationalist formations have been driven out of Mariupol’s residential areas. In mid-April, over 1,300 personnel of the 36th Ukrainian marine infantry brigade laid down their arms at the Ilyich factory in Mariupol. Later, the city’s merchant port was fully cleared of Ukrainian troops and the hostages held there were released.