From Tass.com:

 Ukraine’s current regime apparently hopes that its proposal for exchanging the leader of the Opposition Platform – For Life party, Viktor Mevdedchuk, will help secure the release of the high-ranking foreign military specialists, who according to certain evidence, are trapped on the premises of the iron and steel works Azovstal in Mariupol, the deputy director of the CIS Countries Institute, Vladimir Zharikhin, told TASS on Wednesday.

The analyst doubts that the real purpose of Kiev’s proposal for exchanging Medvedchuk for all remaining militants of the Azov battalion is to save small fry.

“All this fuss is not about the rank-and-file, who in fact have already been written off. In focus there are very concrete people. The attempts to evacuate them have already resulted in the loss of eight helicopters. Four ships were dispatched to Mariupol for the same purpose to no avail. Lastly, there was a breakout attempt, in which the encircled group sustained heavy casualties. Apparently, Medvedchuk, or the person whom they present as Medvedchuk, is their last attempt to achieve the release of the high-ranking foreign nationals. May they say first who are the ones they want to be exchanged,” Zharikhin said.

He speculated that if the man proposed for an exchange is really Medvedchuk, then the Ukrainian special services might have seized him a long time ago and kept in custody just in case, as the last resort.

“Now it’s precisely this type of extreme situation. The question arises who are these very important people for whose sake they (the Ukrainian authorities – TASS) are ready to use their last resource,” Zharikhin wonders.

DPR and Russian troops have intercepted radio communications in at least 6 European languages that indicate that officers, of at least the rank of colonel, from different NATO member states are trapped within Azovstal. This raises serious issues. It is one thing to advise the Ukrainian military in peace-time. It is another thing to be a combatant in war. That violates the NATO charter in several ways, as other members were not informed. Their last chance of being exfiltrated was over on April 5 and now it is only a matter of waiting for the operation to end, probably in a couple of days.

There are said to be 3000 nationalists and Ukrainian armed forces, as well as scientists working in the biolabs, in addition to high-ranking officers from US, Canada, France, Germany, Sweden, Poland, Greece, Turkey and Italy.

Indian External Affairs Minister rebukes the US for worrying about Indian oil purchases from Russia when that amounts to a drop in the bucket next to the EU’s, in a soft-spoken put-down of the US criticism of India for its non-aligned stance on Ukraine. The EAM points out that India is providing humanitarian aid and is willing to do whatever else needed to stop the violence, including mediation.

Global Times:

A fleet of six Y-20 cargo planes of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force was reportedly spotted in Serbia on Saturday, with observers saying on Sunday that it could be the largest overseas operation by the Chinese domestically developed large transport plane yet, displaying the country’s strategic transport capabilities.

Citing commercial flight trackers, US news website thedrive.com reported on Saturday that the six Y-20 aircraft were first spotted heading west in Turkish airspace late Friday night, and later local residents took photos of the Y-20s, which allegedly landed in Nikola Tesla Airport in Belgrade, Serbia. The aircraft later flew over the Bosphorus Strait in Turkey again on their way back to China.

China has not made an official announcement about the mission as of press time, but the Global Times learned that the Y-20s indeed have carried out such a flight.

A whopping six Y-20 large transport aircraft could mark an unprecedented overseas operation, Chinese military observers said.”

The PLA planes were carrying HQ 22 surface-to-air missile systems for the Serbian military, as agreed upon 3 years ago, the Serbs confirmed. The delivery was made through the airspace of at least two other NATO states, Bulgaria and Turkey. The US has warned Serbia against using any military equipment not aligned with the West, as long as it wants to be a part of any Western alliance. There are fears in the West that armed with Chinese and Russian equipment, Serbia may reclaim Kosovo, whose statehood is not recognized by Serbia, China, or Russia.

From Global News, Canada:

“There will be an offensive … not only on Mariupol, but also on other places, cities and villages,” [Lila: Ramzan] Kadyrov said in a video posted on his Telegram channel.

“Luhansk and Donetsk – we will fully liberate in the first place … and then take Kyiv and all other cities.”

24/7 News Bulletin.com

The Telegram channel “Operational reports” reported that the catacombs under Azovstal are located at a depth of up to 35 meters and last 24 kilometers.

There is a secret NATO facility PIT-404- and a secret bio-laboratory of the military bloc with biological weapons. Alliance officers are blocked in these armored tunnels.

According to the channel, there are about 240 foreigners in the catacombs. Among them are NATO and French Foreign Legion officers, biolaboratory personnel and about 300 other guards.

This biolab is known to have been built and operated by Metabiota. She [sic] is associated with Hunter Biden, Rinat Akhmetov and Vladimir Zelensky.

“In the laboratories of this facility, tests were conducted to create a bioweapon. Thousands of residents of Mariupol became “guinea pigs” in these terrible trials. And in these inhuman experiments, mainly Western “specialists” took part, the channel reported.

Apparently, not all French intelligence and special operations officers managed to leave Mariupol. That is why President Emmanuel Macron calls the Kremlin so often.”

I saw a Pepe Escobar tweet from April 4, claiming that the biolabs were down in the 8th level in Azovstal and people were threatened with being sent there.  He claims the Russians are frantically collecting all the evidence for war crimes/genocide trials.

TASS.com has a list of the people associated with the biolabs. No idea where they are at present.

ROBERT POPE

Director, US DoD Cooperative Threat Reduction Program aka Nunn-Lugar Program [under Defense Threat Reduction Agency]

JOANNA WINTRAL Head of DTRA in Ukraine

LANCE LIPPENCOTT Chief, Ukrainian branch, Black & Veatch [contractor with Pentagon since 2008; main contact for Ukrainian government officials]

DAVID MUSTRA Coordinator of N-L program in E Europe and Ukraine, biomonitoring and information transfer, worked with Metabiota

MARY GUTTIEREZ  Vice President of Metabiota, disease modeling and forecasting company

SCOTT THORNTON  Lab upgrade