Seriously injured defenders of the Azovstal steel plant in the devastated port city of Mariupol could be swapped with Russian prisoners of war, Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk has suggested.

“There is no agreement yet” and “negotiations are continuing,” Vereshchuk has said in a Telegram post.

She says the government has been working on different options to rescue fighters trapped in the Azovstal plant but “none of them are perfect”.

The troops in the steelworks have insisted they will never surrender to the Russian forces surrounding them.