The wives of two of the fighters at the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol begged Pope Francis to help save their husbands, reports NBC News.
The Last Hope
“You are our last hope. I hope you can save their lives. Please don’t let them die,” Kateryna Prokopenko, 27, told the pope after his general audience at the Vatican, in video released by Reuters.
Prokopenko and Yuliya Fedosiuk, 29, also asked him to intervene directly with Russian President Vladimir Putin to let them go because “Russian captivity is not an option.”
The women traveled to Rome last month to publicize the situation at the plant. The Azovstal steel plant is the last holdout of resistance in Mariupol, the southern port city now captured by Russian forces. The plant has come under heavy strikes for weeks, and water, food and medicine are running out. Russian tanks and soldiers attempted to enter the fortress on Wednesday, an adviser to the city’s mayor said.
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Source: NBC News
