Yahoo TV

Drone footage released on Tuesday, May 17, showed military personnel leaving the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, according to an official from a Donetsk People’s Republic militia.

The footage, posted by the commander of the Vostok Battalion of the People’s Militia of the Donetsk People’s Republic, Alexander Khodakovsky, shows a number of people walking along a road near the Azovstal plant carrying people on stretchers.

The location is close to where further footage, verified by Storyful, showed injured Ukrainian troops being searched and treated.

Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said on May 16 that 264 people were evacuated through a humanitarian corridor, at least 53 of whom were said to be seriously injured military personnel.

The evacuees were moved to Russian-occupied Novoazovsk and Olenivka in Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine’s Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar.

Malyar said an exchange for the evacuees would take place. Efforts to evacuate remaining troops continued on May 17, Malyar said.

The Azovstal plant had become the last stronghold of Ukrainian troops in Mariupol after most of the city came under the control of the Russian military. Credit: Alexander Khodakovsky via Storyful