Mustafa Dzhemilev, one of the leaders of the Crimean Tatar national movement, said that Turkey had offered Russia to remove Ukrainian troops from Mariupol and guaranteed that they would not fight again until the end of the war.
Dzhemilev stated this during a briefing on May 12.
According to him, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was given a video address by the commander of the 36th Marine Battalion, Serhiy Volynsky, who is stationed at Azovstal. After that, Erdogan spoke twice with Putin, and his spokesman spoke with Russian Defense Minister Shoigu.
"[Erdoganʼs adviser] Ibrahim Kalin spoke with Russian Defense Minister Serhiy Shoigu. He told him: "We have a ship with a capacity of two thousand people in the port of Istanbul. At any moment, when we agree with you, he will come to the port of Berdiansk, there will be buses on this ship that will bring them [defenders] from Mariupol to Berdiansk because the port of Mariupol is mined. They will travel to Berdiansk accompanied by Turkish observers, and we, the Turkish side, undertake that they will be guests of Turkey until the end of the war, i.e. they will not fight until the end of the war," Dzhemilev said.
In response to Kalinʼs words, Shoigu said that they agreed to release the civilian population, and as for the military, they must surrender, guarantee them "normal behavior," and let Zelensky give the command to surrender.
Kalin replied that no commander-in-chief in the world had the right to tell his servicemen to surrender.
- The Minister for the Occupied Territories Iryna Vereshchuk said that negotiations on the evacuation of 38 seriously wounded fighters from Azovstal are underway.
- Defenders of the city, who are in the basements of Azovstal, have repeatedly asked to apply the extraction procedure to them and take them out and the wounded soldiers.