Small investors in the stock market are frustrated as their wait for a good time gets delayed by the Bangladesh’s ongoing political unrest. The political impasse over who should oversee the upcoming national polls is thwarting the stock market’s recovery from Covid-19 pandemic and the Ukraine-Russia war. The small investors’ shares are stuck on the floor price (minimum sale rate) and overall economic downfall. This has been painful for many unfortunate small investors of the capital markets, according to market analysts. Policymakers and the Bangladesh Securities and Exchange Commission (BSEC) paint a rosy picture for small investors saying that stock markets will rebound with enlistment of new companies and injection of big investments. But the situation for the small investors seems to be hopeless. Read: Economy buffeted by political unrest amid declining forex reserves: Analysts A large number of shareholders have remained stuck with their investment in the capital market for over a decade amid fading hopes. “No one, not even the regulator or stock market authorities pay heed to their screams,” Abdul Latif, a grocery owner and one of the affected investors, told UNB in a broken voice. He said he invested Tk13 lakh in 2011 to buy shares of different companies listed in Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE). After graduation in 1998 Latif found no suitable job and then started a small business in the Motjheel area in 2002 with support from his father-in-law. He made a good profit in the business and invested money in the share market. In 2010 Latif invested around Tk13 lakh of which 5 lakh was his own and 8 lakh borrowed from relatives. All of his investment was stuck in shares of different companies due to a big scam in the capital market in 2011. Read: Govt aims to collect 11.2% of GDP in taxes by FY 2025-26 Like Latif, thousands of investors lost their hard-earned capital in 2011, and after that, some were able to gain part of the capita. But most of them left the capital market losing nearly all investment. Many of such investors are still in the market hoping for a rebound in the DSE, but without any good news. There is no sign of lifting the floor price before the next election. However, economists say that people do not have confidence in the market. BSEC advises investors to be patient until the general election is held by January next. Dr ABM Mirza Azizul Islam, an economist and a former adviser of a caretaker government, told UNB that there has been a crisis in investors' confidence in the stock market for a long time. “To this are added various economic crises, the international situation, and everything including elections and national politics,” he said. Read: Despite challenges, govt hoping to restore economy’s pre-Covid momentum in current fiscal As a result, first of all, steps should be taken to eliminate the trust crisis. In this case, trust should be ensured by establishing good governance, he said. That is, the investors have to be given the assurance that if someone steals their money through manipulation, they will be prosecuted. Besides, the supply of good shares should be increased. Through these two steps, it is possible to eliminate the market problem. But it is not easy at all, said Dr Azizul Islam. Dr Abu Ahmed, former professor of Dhaka University’s Economics Department, said there are two crises in the market: one on the demand side and the other in investor confidence. On the supply side, the problem is that there are fewer good companies. As a result, it is a win-win situation for manipulation and syndicates, he said. Read: Country’s first electrical testing laboratory on the cards All in all, the stock market is currently in an unstable condition and gradually the situation is getting worse. The passage from here is very difficult, he said. According to market insiders, the stock market situation is in a dire. The situation is not improving due to political uncertainty ahead of national elections, increases in commodity prices, and various international issues. The market has lost its importance to the government as well. For those who are not directly involved with government policymakers, the stock market is a source of irritation. Their thinking is like this - if there is no stock market, there will be no problem in the country. For these reasons, the government wants to hold the market with floor prices until the next national election. This brings an opportunity for syndicates blessed by the regulatory body to be controlling the market, the market insiders said. They spoke on condition of anonymity. BSEC Chairman Professor Shibli Rubayat Ul Islam told UNB in this regard that the global situation is not in the hands of the regulator or the government. Investors should beware of investing with any company depending on rumours. He also said due to a lack of financial literacy, people are sometimes investing in weak shares with an expectation of big profit which is not the right way of investment. Read: BSEC sits with stock market stakeholders Thursday after drastic fall of share prices

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday told his country's Victory Day parade on Moscow’s Red Square that “a real war” has been unleashed against Russia by the West's “untamed ambitions,” shortly after the Kremlin's forces rained cruise missiles on Ukrainian targets. “Today civilization is once again at a decisive turning point,” Putin said at Moscow’s annual commemorations celebrating the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II. “A real war has been unleashed against our Motherland.” Since Russia invaded its neighbor more than 14 months ago, Putin has repeatedly framed the war in Ukraine as a proxy conflict with the West. The Kremlin's official narrative of the war has painted a picture of an existential conflict with the West, which in Moscow’s view is merely using Ukraine as a tool to destroy Russia, re-write its history and crush its traditional values. That version of events has dominated Russian state media coverage of the war. In his speech, Putin insisted that the West’s “untamed ambitions, arrogance and impunity” are to blame for the conflict. Putin welcomed soldiers fighting in Ukraine who were present at the parade. “To Russia! To our brave armed forces! To Victory!” Putin concluded the speech. Also Read: War shadows Victory Day, Russia’s integral holiday Russia unleashed a barrage of cruise missiles on Ukraine overnight into Tuesday, hours before the start of the Moscow parade, which this year is taking place amid tight security measures. The Kremlin's forces launched 25 missiles overnight in a wave of attacks across Ukraine, the Ukrainian air force said, adding that air defense had successfully destroyed 23 of them. In a Telegram post, the air force said eight Kalibr cruise missiles were launched from carriers in the Black Sea toward the east and 17 from strategic aircraft. The barrage came as Moscow and other cities hosted military parades and other festivities marking Victory Day, Russia's biggest secular holiday that this year has been significantly overshadowed by the war in Ukraine. Russian media have counted 24 Russian cities that canceled May 9 military parades — the staple of celebrations across Russia — for the first time in years. The Immortal Regiment processions, in which crowds take to the streets holding portraits of relatives who died or served in World War II — another pillar of the holiday — have also been canceled in multiple cities. Also Read: Russia will defend its interests and work together for a peaceful future: Ambassador says on country’s Victory Day Regional officials blamed unspecified “security concerns.” Some speculated, however, that the reason behind canceling Immortal Regiment marches was the fact that Russians might bring portraits of relatives who died in Ukraine to those processions, illustrating the scale of Russia's losses in the drawn-out conflict. Moscow sought to project a show of force during its flagship parade on Red Square, with top-notch military equipment rumbling through it and leaders of ex-Soviet nations standing beside President Vladimir Putin. Initially, only one of them — Kyrgyz President Sadyr Zhaparov — was expected to attend, but at the last minute on Monday officials confirmed that leaders of Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan were heading to Moscow as well. Still, the parade looked more modest than usual: There were no military aircraft flying over Red Square, and fewer pieces of military equipment were displayed. For the first time in years, the parade ended in under an hour. The pared-down celebrations come after ambiguous official reports last week that two Ukrainian drones flew into the heart of Moscow under the cover of darkness and reached the Kremlin before being shot down. The Kremlin billed it as an attempt at Putin's life; Ukraine denied involvement.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged New Zealand to take a leading role in focusing on the environmental destruction his country is suffering as a result of Russia’s invasion. Zelenskyy delivered his message via video link to lawmakers who packed the debating chamber at 8 a.m. Wednesday. He became just the second foreign leader to address New Zealand’s parliament, after Australia’s Julia Gillard did so in 2011. Zelenskyy said it was possible to rebuild a nation’s economy and infrastructure, even though it may take many years. “But you can’t rebuild destroyed nature, just as you can’t restore destroyed lives,” he said. Read: Ukraine president again presses West for advanced weapons Zelenskyy is pushing for a 10-point peace plan that, as well as environmental protection, including items such as nuclear safety and justice. He has been asking various countries to take a lead on different points. He said some of the environmental effects of the war included poisoned groundwater, ravaged forests, flooded coal mines and huge areas of Ukraine that remain contaminated from unexploded mines. Zelenskyy thanked New Zealand for their contributions to Ukraine’s war effort so far and offered a message of hope. “Various dictators and aggressors, they always fail to realize the strength of the free world’s governments,” he said. New Zealand announced it was providing another 3 million New Zealand dollars ($2 million) in humanitarian aid through the International Committee of the Red Cross, adding to the NZ$8 million it had already provided. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told Zelenskyy her country’s support for Ukraine wasn’t determined by geography or diplomatic ties. Read: ‘I’ll kill you all’: Man kills 3 in Rome condo board meeting “Our judgment was a simple one,” she said. “We asked ourselves the question, ‘What if it was us?’” She said that in such a scenario, New Zealand would want nations in the international community to use their voices, “regardless of their political systems, their distance, or their size.” Lawmakers finished the address by singing a World War II-era song in the Indigenous Māori language.

Russian forces fired missiles and artillery on Ukrainian-held areas across the river from Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, authorities said Saturday as concern persisted about safety at the Russian-controlled plant after it was temporarily knocked offline. Grad missiles and artillery shells hit the cities of Nikopol and Marhanets, each about 10 kilometers (6 miles) and across the Dnieper River from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, said Valentyn Reznichenko, governor of Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region. Russian forces occupied the nuclear plant complex early in the war in Ukraine, and Ukrainian workers have kept it running. Each side has repeatedly accused the other of shelling the complex, raising fears that the fighting could trigger a catastrophe. Authorities began distributing iodine tablets Friday to residents who live near the plant in case of a radiation leak. The move came a day after the plant was temporarily knocked offline because of what officials said was fire damage to a transmission line. Recent satellite images from Planet Labs showed fires burning around the complex over the last several days. The U.N.’s atomic energy agency has been trying to send a team in to inspect and help secure the plant. Officials said preparations for the visit were underway, but it remained unclear when it might take place. Ukraine has claimed Russia is using the power plant as a shield by storing weapons there and launching attacks from around it. Moscow, for its part, accuses Ukraine of recklessly firing on the nuclear complex. Read: Nuclear treaty conference near end with Ukraine in spotlight Elsewhere in Ukraine, one person was killed and another wounded in Russian firing in the Mykolaiv region, local government officials said. Mykolaiv city is an important Black Sea port and shipbuilding center.   The governor of the eastern Donetsk region, Pavlo Kyrylenko, said Saturday that two people were killed in Russian firing on the city of Bakhmut, a significant target for Russian and separatist forces seeking to take control of the parts of the region they do not already hold.

The death toll from a Russian rocket attack as Ukraine observed its Independence Day has risen to 25, including an 11-year-old boy found under the rubble of a house and a 6-year-old killed in a car fire near a train station that was the target, a Ukrainian official said Thursday. Russia's Defense Ministry said its forces used an Iskander missile to strike a military train that was carrying Ukrainian troops and equipment to the front line in eastern Ukraine. The ministry claimed more than 200 reservists "were destroyed on their way to the combat zone.” The deputy head of the Ukrainian presidential office, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, did not say if the 25 victims he reported from Wednesday’s attack all were civilians. A total of 31 people sustained injuries, he said. The lethal strike in Chaplyne, a town of about 3,500 residents in the central Dnipropetrovsk region. nonetheless served as a brutally painful reminder that Russia's military force is causing civilians to suffer and testing Ukraine's resilience after six months of a grinding war. In Geneva on Thursday, the U.N.’s human rights chief, Michelle Bachelet, decried the time since Russian President Vladimir Putin sent troops into the neighboring country as “unimaginably horrifying.” She called on Putin “to halt armed attacks against Ukraine.” The train station strike took place after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned that Moscow might attempt “something particularly cruel” this week as Ukraine marked both its 1991 declaration of independence from the Soviet Union and the six-month point of Russia's invasion on Wednesday. Tetyana Kvitnytska, deputy head of the Dnipropetrovsk regional health department, said the people wounded in the attack suffered a range of injuries. Also read: 15 reported killed in Independence Day attack in Ukraine “There are craniocerebral injuries, limb fractures, many patients with explosive and shrapnel injuries, burns," she said. "People were in a difficult condition, both physically and psychologically.” “Now our efforts are focused on the children who suffered. We work with four children. Three children out of four are in serious condition. In addition to severe stress, they have blast and shrapnel injuries, burns, and fractures," Kvitnytska said. "The children are in serious condition.” The Russian government has repeatedly claimed following attacks in which civilians died that its forces only aimed at legitimate military targets. Hours before the train station attack, Russia insisted it was doing its best to spare civilians, even at a cost of slowing down its offensive in Ukraine. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, speaking Wednesday at a meeting of his counterparts from a security organization dominated by Russia and China, said Russia was carrying out strikes with precision weapons against Ukrainian military targets, and “everything is done to avoid civilian casualties.” “Undoubtedly, it slows down the pace of the offensive, but we do it deliberately,” he said. It was the second time Shoigu has made such a claim; he said the same thing in late May. Elsewhere in Ukraine, three people were killed in the eastern region of Donetsk on Wednesday and one more was wounded, Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said on Telegram. Nikopol, a city across the river from the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, came under more Russian shelling overnight, Valentyn Reznichenko, the governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region, said.

Terming the Ukraine-Russia war as meaningless Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Thursday said only arms producers are profitting from the conflict. “…this war is meaningless. Because we are witnessing that only the arms producers are making profits. The lives of the general people are endangered,” she said. The prime minister said this while inaugurating Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Centennial Technical Training Center in Tungipara and 23 other technical training centres in various upazilas across the country. The programme was held at Osmani Memorial Auditorium while the PM joined virtually from her official residence Ganabhaban. Hasina said that this war comes with sanctions and counter-sanctions threatening the global economy. “Developed countries are facing severe problems. They have now started to save electricity and fuel oil, they are in anxiety about food security and taking various steps for that,” she said. The premier said that countries like Bangladesh which have started a journey towards a specific goal to become developed is facing severe hurdles due to this war. “This is very much regretful. But we must not stop our advancement,” she said. The PM mentioned that the war struck when the world was facing coronavirus pandemic and resultant economic recession. “To save the fuel oil all countries have taken various types of initiatives and we are also following that,” she said. Hasina put emphasis on building skilled manpower as Bangladesh has a huge number of young population. “We are working on that. We want to build skilled manpower through providing them training aiming to continue the pace of development.” The prime minister said that it's very much normal that the foreign exchange reserves will sometimes be more and sometimes less. “There are some people who are making hue and cry over this issue. I think it is enough if we have reserves for procuring three months' food,” she said. But she said that the country should reduce its dependency on others for food items. “We have to increase our own food production. We have fertile lands, we can produce food easily. We have to adopt modern technology for not only producing food but also preserve those,” she said. She emphasised on setting up new industries for food processing purpose which can meet the domestic demands and earn foreign currency through exporting those. “For having foreign exchange we must not be dependent on the remittance only, we have to increase our export items through diversification and getting new markets,” she added. The premier asked the authorities concerned to look into the demands of the new markets and produce those to export them. “That means, we will have to give more attention to export-oriented foreign exchange earnings,” she said. Read:Hasina offers Bangladesh land for setting up D-8 economic zone PM Hasina said her government sent 963,0505 workers abroad and received US$ 21.03 billion during the 2021-22 fiscal as remittance which was five times higher than that of the FY2005-06 during the BNP-Jamaat alliance government. “Due to corruption, irregularities and syndicate the number of manpower export during the BNP government had reduced significantly and they had only sent 2,52,0902 workers in the 2005-06 fiscal,” she said.

Russia on Tuesday claimed to have taken control of 97% of one of the two provinces that make up Ukraine’s Donbas, bringing the Kremlin closer to its goal of fully capturing the eastern industrial heartland of coal mines and factories. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Moscow’s forces hold nearly all of Luhansk province. And it appears that Russia now occupies roughly half of Donetsk province, according to Ukrainian officials and military analysts. After abandoning its bungled attempt to storm Kyiv two months ago, Russia declared that taking the entire Donbas is its main objective. Moscow-backed separatists have been battling Ukrainian government forces in the Donbas since 2014, and the region has borne the brunt of the Russian onslaught in recent weeks. Early in the war, Russian troops also took control of the entire Kherson region and a large part of the Zaporizhzhia region, both in the south. Russian officials and their local appointees have talked about plans for those regions to either declare their independence or be folded into Russia. But in what may be the latest instance of anti-Russian sabotage inside Ukraine, Russian state media said Tuesday that an explosion at a cafe in the city of Kherson wounded four people. Tass called the apparent bombing in the Russian-occupied city a “terror act.” Read: Ukraine recovers bodies from steel-plant siege Before the Feb. 24 invasion, Ukrainian officials said Russia controlled some 7% of the country, including the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia annexed in 2014, and areas held by the separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk. Last week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russian forces hold 20% of the country. While Russia has superior firepower, the Ukrainian defenders are entrenched and have shown the ability to counterattack. Zelenskyy said Russian forces made no significant advances in the eastern Donbas region over the past day. “The absolutely heroic defense of the Donbas continues,” he said late Tuesday in his nightly video address. Zelenskyy said the Russians clearly did not expect to meet so much resistance and are now trying to bring in additional troops and equipment. He said the same was true in the Kherson region. Speaking earlier to a Financial Times conference, Zelenskyy insisted on Ukraine’s need to defeat Russia on the battlefield but also said he is still open to peace talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin. But a former senior U.S. intelligence officer said the time isn’t right. “You’re not going to get to the negotiating table until neither side feels they have an advantage that they could push,” said Andrea Kendall-Taylor of the Washington-based Center for a New American Security. The Russians “think they will be able to take the whole of the Donbas and then might use that as the opportunity to call for negotiations,” Kendall-Taylor said at an online seminar organized by Columbia and New York universities.  

The Biden administration announced on Tuesday that it will send Ukraine a small number of high-tech, medium-range rocket systems, a critical weapon that Ukrainian leaders have been begging for as they struggle to stall Russian progress in the Donbas region. The rocket systems are part of a new $700 million tranche of security assistance for Ukraine from the U.S. that will include helicopters, Javelin anti-tank weapon systems, tactical vehicles, spare parts and more, according to two senior administration officials. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to preview the weapons package that will be formally unveiled on Wednesday. The U.S. decision to provide the advance rocket systems tries to strike a balance between the desire to help Ukraine battle ferocious Russian artillery barrages while not providing arms that could allow Ukraine to hit targets deep inside Russia and trigger an escalation in the war. In a guest essay published Tuesday evening in The New York Times, President Joe Biden confirmed that he’s decided to “provide the Ukrainians with more advanced rocket systems and munitions that will enable them to more precisely strike key targets on the battlefield in Ukraine.” Biden had said Monday that the U.S. would not send Ukraine “rocket systems that can strike into Russia.” Any weapons system can shoot into Russia if it’s close enough to the border. The aid package expected to be unveiled Wednesday would send what the U.S. considers medium-range rockets — they generally can travel about 45 miles (70 kilometers), the officials said. The Ukrainians have assured U.S. officials that they will not fire rockets into Russian territory, according to the senior administration officials. One official noted that the advanced rocket systems will give Ukrainian forces greater precision in targeting Russian assets inside Ukraine. The expectation is that Ukraine could use the rockets in the eastern Donbas region, where they could both intercept Russian artillery and take out Russian positions in towns where fighting is intense, such as Sievierodonetsk. Read: High prices, Asian markets could blunt EU ban on Russian oil Sievierodonetsk is important to Russian efforts to capture the Donbas before more Western arms arrive to bolster Ukraine’s defense. The city, which is 90 miles (145 kilometers) south of the Russian border, is in an area that is the last pocket under Ukrainian government control in the Luhansk region of the Donbas. Biden in his New York Times’ essay added: “We are not encouraging or enabling Ukraine to strike beyond its borders. We do not want to prolong the war just to inflict pain on Russia.” It’s the 11th package approved so far, and will be the first to tap the $40 billion in security and economic assistance recently passed by Congress. The rocket systems would be part of Pentagon drawdown authority, so would involve taking weapons from U.S. inventory and getting them into Ukraine quickly. Ukrainian troops would also need training on the new systems, which could take at least a week or two. Officials said the plan is to send Ukraine the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS, which is mounted on a truck and can carry a container with six rockets. The system can launch a medium-range rocket, which is the current plan, but is also capable of firing a longer-range missile, the Army Tactical Missile System, which has a range of about 190 miles (300 kilometers) and is not part of the plan. Since the war began in February, the U.S. and its allies have tried to walk a narrow line: send Ukraine weapons needed to fight off Russia, but stop short of providing aid that will inflame Russian President Vladimir Putin and trigger a broader conflict that could spill over into other parts of Europe. Over time, however, the U.S. and allies have amped up the weaponry going into Ukraine, as the fight has shifted from Russia’s broader campaign to take the capital, Kyiv, and other areas, to more close-contact skirmishes for small pieces of land in the east and south. To that end, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been pleading with the West to send multiple launch rocket systems to Ukraine as soon as possible to help stop Russia’s destruction of towns in the Donbas. The rockets have a longer range than the howitzer artillery systems that the U.S. has provided Ukraine. They would allow Ukrainian forces to strike Russian troops from a distance outside the range of Russia’s artillery systems. “We are fighting for Ukraine to be provided with all the weapons needed to change the nature of the fighting and start moving faster and more confidently toward the expulsion of the occupiers,” Zelenskyy said in a recent address. Ukraine needs multiple launch rocket systems, said Philip Breedlove, a retired U.S. Air Force general who was NATO’s top commander from 2013 to 2016. “These are very important capabilities that we have not gotten them yet. And they not only need them, but they have been very vociferous in explaining they want them,” said Breedlove. “We need to get serious about supplying this army so that it can do what the world is asking it to do: fight a world superpower alone on the battlefield.” U.S. and White House officials had no public comment on the specifics of the aid package. “We continue to consider a range of systems that have the potential to be effective on the battlefield for our Ukrainian partners. But the point the president made is that we won’t be sending long-range rockets for use beyond the battlefield in Ukraine,” State Department Ned Price said Tuesday. “As the battle has shifted its dynamics, we have also shifted the type of security assistance that we are providing to them, in large part because they have asked us for the various systems that are going to be more effective in places like the Donbas.” Read: Experts: Iran disrupts internet; tower collapse deaths at 34 Russia has been making incremental progress in the Donbas, as it tries to take the remaining sections of the region not already controlled by Russian-backed separatists. Putin has repeatedly warned the West against sending greater firepower to Ukraine. The Kremlin said Putin held an 80-minute telephone call Saturday with the leaders of France and Germany in which he warned against the continued transfers of Western weapons. Overall, the United States has committed approximately $5 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since the beginning of the Biden administration, including approximately $4.5 billion since the Russia invaded on Feb. 24.

A Ukrainian court sentenced a 21-year-old Russian soldier to life in prison on Monday for killing a Ukrainian civilian, in the first war crimes trial since Russia’s invasion. Sgt. Vadim Shishimarin was accused of shooting a Ukrainian civilian in the head in a village in the northeastern Sumy region in the early days of the war. Read: Record 100 million people forcibly displaced worldwide: UNHCR He pleaded guilty and testified that he shot the man after being ordered to do so. He told the court that an officer insisted that the Ukrainian man, who was speaking on his cellphone, could pinpoint their location to the Ukrainian forces. During the trial, Shishimarin asked the widow of the victim to forgive him. Read: Russia presses Donbas attacks as Polish leader praises Kyiv Shishimarin’s defense attorney Victor Ovsyanikov argued that his client, a member of a Russian tank unit who was eventually captured, had been unprepared for the “violent military confrontation” and mass casualties that Russian troops encountered when they first invaded Ukraine.

Russia claimed to have captured Mariupol on Friday in what would be its biggest victory yet in its war with Ukraine, after a nearly three-month siege that reduced much of the strategic port city to a smoking ruin, with over 20,000 civilians feared dead. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu reported to President Vladimir Putin the “complete liberation” of the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol — the last stronghold of Ukrainian resistance — and the city as a whole, spokesman Igor Konashenkov said. There was no immediate confirmation from Ukraine. Russia’s state news agency RIA Novosti quoted the ministry as saying a total of 2,439 Ukrainian fighters who had been holed up at the steelworks had surrendered since Monday, including over 500 on Friday. Also Read: Fall of Mariupol appears at hand; fighters leave steel plant As they surrendered, the troops were taken prisoner by the Russians, and at least some were taken to a former penal colony. Others were said to be hospitalized. The defense of the steel mill had been led by Ukraine’s Azov Regiment, whose far-right origins have been seized on by the Kremlin as part of an effort to cast its invasion as a battle against Nazi influence in Ukraine. Russia said the Azov commander was taken away from the plant in an armored vehicle. Russian authorities have threatened to investigate some of the steel mill’s defenders for war crimes and put them on trial, branding them “Nazis” and criminals. That has stirred international fears about their fate. The steelworks, which sprawled across 11 square kilometers (4 square miles), had been the site of fierce fighting for weeks. The dwindling group of outgunned fighters had held out, drawing Russian airstrikes, artillery and tank fire, before their government ordered them to abandon the plant’s defense and save themselves. Also Read: Russian neighbor Finland announces it wants to join NATO The complete takeover of Mariupol gives Putin a badly needed victory in the war he began on Feb. 24 — a conflict that was supposed to have been a lightning conquest for the Kremlin but instead has seen the failure to take the capital of Kyiv, a pullback of forces to refocus on eastern Ukraine, and the sinking of the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet. Military analysts said Mariupol’s capture at this point is of mostly symbolic importance, since the city was already effectively under Moscow’s control and most of the Russian forces that were tied down by the fighting there had already left. In other developments Friday, the West moved to pour billions more in aid into Ukraine and fighting raged in the Donbas, the industrial heartland in eastern Ukraine that Putin is bent on capturing. Russian forces shelled a vital highway and kept up attacks on a key city in the Luhansk region, hitting a school among other sites, Ukrainian authorities said. Luhansk is part of the Donbas. The Kremlin had sought control of Mariupol to complete a land corridor between Russia and the Crimean Peninsula, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014, and free up troops to join the larger battle for the Donbas. The city’s loss also deprives Ukraine of a vital seaport. Mariupol endured some of the worst suffering of the war and became a worldwide symbol of defiance. An estimated 100,000 people remained out a prewar population of 450,000, many trapped without food, water, heat or electricity. Relentless bombardment left rows upon rows of shattered or hollowed-out buildings. A maternity hospital was hit with a lethal Russian airstrike on March 9, producing searing images of pregnant women being evacuated from the place. A week later, about 300 people were reported killed in a bombing of a theater where civilians were taking shelter, although the real death toll could be closer to 600. Satellite images in April showed what appeared to be mass graves just outside Mariupol, where local officials accused Russia of concealing the slaughter by burying up to 9,000 civilians. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Monday the evacuation of his forces from the miles of tunnels and bunkers beneath Azovstal was done to save the lives of the fighters. Earlier this month, hundreds of civilians were evacuated from the plant during humanitarian cease-fires and spoke of the terror of ceaseless bombardment, the dank conditions underground and the fear that they wouldn’t make it out alive. As the end drew near at Azovstal, wives of fighters who held out at the steelworks told of what they feared would be their last contact with their husbands. Olga Boiko, wife of a marine, wiped away tears as she said that her husband had written her on Thursday: “Hello. We surrender, I don’t know when I will get in touch with you and if I will at all. Love you. Kiss you. Bye.” Natalia Zaritskaya, wife of another fighter at Azovstal, said that based on the messages she had seen over the past two days, “Now they are on the path from hell to hell. Every inch of this path is deadly.” She said that two days ago, her husband reported that of the 32 soldiers with whom he had served, only eight survived, most of them seriously wounded. While Russia described the troops leaving the steel plant as a mass surrender, the Ukrainians called it a mission fulfilled. They said the fighters had tied down Moscow’s forces and hindered their bid to seize the east.   Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Zelenskyy, described the defense of Mariupol as “the Thermopylae of the 21st century” — a reference to one of history’s most glorious defeats, in which 300 Spartans held off a much larger Persian force in 480 B.C. before finally succumbing.