The news that the defenders of Mariupol had left the underground of the Azovstal steelworks for Russian captivity brought no relief to their families or to Ukrainian society. If this war had been fought according to the rules, this would have been good information. But it has its own rules. In part, we can take comfort in the idea that underground, under constant shelling and bombardment, without medical care, medicine and water, and without the ammunition that they must necessarily have run out of after almost two months of fighting, they had no chance of survival. Now, in captivity, they have that chance. But not all of them. A few hours before the attack on 24 February, one of the