He also leaves Azovstal as a militiaman in the photo as a symbol of resistance

His photo in the darkness of the Azovstal basement, with one arm bandaged and two fingers raised in victory, had become one of the symbolic images of the resistance of the Azov battalion fighters barricaded in the steel mill.

But now for that Ukrainian militiaman, as for hundreds of other soldiers, the hour of surrender has come: in fact, the man is among the soldiers who had to leave the Mariupol factory yesterday to be transferred to the separatist territories.

The man appears in a photograph taken yesterday as he is accompanied on a bus during the evacuation of the steel plant, closely guarded by a member of the militia of the self-declared Republic of Donetsk.

    The man, immortalized with a bandaged arm and with an iron brace, a steaming drink in his hand, blackened hands and two fingers as a sign of victory, was among the soldiers of the Azov battalion portrayed in a photo shoot made on May 10 by another militiaman, Dmytro 'Orest' Kozatskyi, who had told in a rare report from inside the steel mill the resistance of the soldiers of the Azov battalion, with visible scars on the face and arms and legs reduced to stumps.