Kyiv said about 100 civilians were evacuated from the sprawling Azovstal steelworks in the devastated port of Mariupol, where local residents have been holed up with the last Ukrainian soldiers in the city amid dire conditions and intense Russian bombing.
The United Nations confirmed that a "safe passage operation" was conducted on Sunday in co-ordination with Ukraine, Russia and the International Committee of the Red Cross, days after UN secretary general António Guterres called for the urgent evacuation of civilians from Mariupol in talks with the leaders of both countries.
“Evacuation of civilians from Azovstal began. The 1st group of about 100 people is already heading to the (government-controlled) area,” Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy wrote on Twitter.
“Tomorrow we’ll meet them in Zaporizhzhia. Grateful to our team! Now they, together with UN, are working on the evacuation of other civilians from the plant.”
While some evacuees were being taken to Zaporizhzhia, a city some 220km northwest of Mariupol, dozens of other civilians from the Azovstal plant were reportedly being bussed to Russian-occupied territory to the east of the ruined port on the Azov Sea.
‘Abducted’
Russia claims to have “evacuated” more than a million Ukrainians to its territory since it invaded its neighbour on February 24th, but Ukraine says its citizens are effectively being “abducted” by Russian troops who are not allowing them safe passage to Kyiv-controlled areas.
An unknown number of civilians took refuge in Azovstal with Ukrainian soldiers who refused to surrender as Moscow subjected the strategic port city to a two-month siege and intense bombing that local officials say killed more than 20,000 residents. Kyiv accuses Russian troops of hiding evidence of war crimes in mass graves outside Mariupol.
It is not clear what will become of many hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers in Azovstal, who have appealed for their wounded to be evacuated and for servicemen who were operated on in extremely basic conditions to be taken out and given proper treatment.
Military analysts say Russia’s push to take more territory in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region and along its southern coast has been delayed by continued resistance from the last contingent of government forces in Mariupol.
Heavy exchanges of shelling continued over the weekend along the frontline in Donbas and to the north in the Kharkiv region, and several Russian missiles hit the airport in the Black Sea city of Odesa on Saturday, causing no casualties but doing severe damage to the runway.
Heavy weapons
Ukraine's western allies are accelerating deliveries of heavy weapons to help it resist Russia's onslaught in the east, and US president Joe Biden is now asking Congress for $33 billion (€31.3 billion) in new funding for Kyiv, most of it in military aid.
Nancy Pelosi, speaker of US House of Representatives, led a delegation from Congress on a visit to Kyiv on Saturday, which she said would “send an unmistakable and resounding message to the entire world: America stands firmly with Ukraine.”
“We believe that we are visiting you to say thank you for your fight for freedom,” she told Mr Zelenskiy. “We are on a frontier of freedom and your fight is a fight for everyone. Our commitment is to be there for you until the fight is done.”
Thousands of civilians have been killed and more than 10 million displaced in Russia’s war on Ukraine, which Pope Francis described on Sunday as a “macabre regression of humanity”.
