People fleeing besieged Mariupol described weeks of shelling and deprivation as they arrived in Ukrainian-controlled territory on Monday, where officials and first responders awaited the first group of civilians freed from a steel plant that is the last stronghold of Ukrainian fighters in the devastated port city.
A video posted online Sunday by Ukrainian forces showed elderly women and mothers with young children climbing a steep pile of rubble from the sprawling Azovstal steel plant and eventually boarding a bus.
More than 100 civilians were expected to arrive in the Ukrainian-controlled city of Zaporizhzhia on Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sunday.
The evacuation, if successful, would represent unusual progress in alleviating the human toll of the nearly 10-week war, which has caused particular suffering in Mariupol. Previous attempts to open safe corridors out of the Azov Sea city and elsewhere have failed, with Ukrainian officials repeatedly accusing Russian forces of shooting and shelling along agreed-upon evacuation routes.
“Today, for the first time in all the days of the war, this vital need [humanitarian] corridor has started to work,” Zelensky said in a pre-recorded speech posted on his Telegram messaging channel.
Ukrainian civilians holed up inside a steel plant in Mariupol under siege by Russian forces for nearly two months began evacuating over the weekend and are poised to reach Ukraine-held territory. 5:32
Zelensky told Greek state television that civilians left at the Mariupol steel factory were afraid to board the buses because they believed they would be taken to Russia. He said that the United Nations had assured him that they would be allowed to go to areas controlled by his government.
Denys Shlega, commander of the 12th Operational Brigade of Ukraine’s National Guard, said in a televised interview Sunday night that several hundred civilians remain trapped along with nearly 500 wounded soldiers and “numerous” bodies.
“Several dozen small children are still in the bunkers under the plant,” Shlega said.
UN humanitarian spokesman Saviano Abreu said civilians arriving in Zaporizhzhia, some 230 kilometers northwest of Mariupol, would receive immediate support, including psychological services. A team from Doctors Without Borders was waiting for the UN convoy at a reception center for displaced people in the city.
Meanwhile, far from the battlefield, European Union energy ministers met Monday to discuss a new set of sanctions, which could include restrictions on Russian oil, though members of the 27-nation bloc dependent on Russia, including Hungary and Slovakia are wary of taking tough action.
Injured man trapped in steel plant
As many as 100,000 people may still be in Mariupol, including some 2,000 Ukrainian fighters under the sprawling Soviet-era steel plant, the only part of the city not occupied by the Russians.
Mariupol, a port city on the Sea of Azov, has seen some of the worst suffering. A Russian airstrike hit a maternity hospital in the first weeks of the war and hundreds of people were reported killed when a theater was bombed.
The city is a key target due to its strategic location near the Crimean peninsula, which Russia seized from Ukraine in 2014.
A Ukrainian official at the plant urged groups such as the United Nations and the Red Cross to ensure the evacuation of wounded fighters, though he acknowledged some of the wounded are difficult to reach.
“There is rubble. We don’t have special equipment. It is difficult for soldiers to lift slabs that weigh tons with just their arms,” Sviatoslav Palamar, deputy commander of the Azov Regiment, told the AP in an interview. “We hear voices of people who are still alive” inside shattered buildings.
The Azov Regiment originated as a far-right paramilitary unit and is now part of the Ukrainian military.
Along with his Azov regiment, Palamar said, marines, police, border guards, coast guards and others are defending the plant. The bodies of the dead Ukrainian fighters remain inside the plant, he said, “because we believe we will be able to transfer them to the territory controlled by the Ukrainian government. We have to do everything to bury the heroes with honors.”
The Russian Defense Ministry said its forces struck dozens of military targets in eastern Ukraine in the past 24 hours, including troop and weapons concentrations and an ammunition depot near Chervone in the Zaporizhzhia region, which lies to the west. from Donbas.
The information could not be independently verified. The Ukrainian president’s office said at least three people were killed and seven others, including a child, injured in Donbas in the past 24 hours. The Zaporizhzhia regional administration said at least two people were killed and four others wounded in the Russian shelling of the city of Orikhiv.
A full picture of the battle unfolding in eastern Ukraine is difficult to capture. The fighting makes it dangerous for reporters to move around, and both sides have introduced strict restrictions on reporting from the combat zone.
Russia locked in the east, analysts say
Ukraine’s military claimed on Monday to have destroyed two small Russian patrol boats in the Black Sea. Drone footage posted online showed what the Ukrainians described as two Russian Raptor boats exploding after being hit by missiles.
The AP could not immediately confirm the attacks independently.
US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is the latest foreign dignitary to visit Ukraine, while Canada has yet to send even a cabinet minister. Meanwhile, Ukraine is reinforcing its positions in the east of the country in preparation for a major Russian attack. 2:13
But Western military analysts have suggested Russia’s offensive is proceeding more slowly than planned. So far, Russian troops and Russian-backed separatists appear to have made minor gains since the eastern offensive began last month.
Britain’s Defense Ministry said at a daily briefing Monday that it believes more than a quarter of all troops Russia has deployed to Ukraine are “combat ineffective.” That phrase refers to an army’s ability to wage war, which is affected by the loss of soldiers to injury and death and the damage or destruction of equipment.
The British military believes Russia has involved more than 120 so-called “battalion tactical groups” in the war since February, accounting for 65 percent of Moscow’s entire fighting force.
Some of Russia’s most elite forces “have suffered the highest levels of attrition,” the ministry said in its Twitter briefing. “It will probably take years for Russia to reconstitute these forces.”
Hundreds of millions of dollars in military assistance have poured into Ukraine during the war, but Russia’s vast arsenals mean Ukraine still needs massive support. Zelenskyy has called on the West for more weapons and tougher economic sanctions against Russia.
Reference-www.cbc.ca