ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine (AP) — After a nearly two-month siege, civilians sheltering at a steel plant in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol began to be evacuated over the weekend, and people sheltering elsewhere in the city could leave on Monday. monday. local officials said.
A video posted online Sunday by Ukrainian forces showed elderly women and mothers with young children climbing up a steep pile of rubble from the rubble of the Azovstal steel plant and eventually getting onto a bus.
More than 100 civilians were expected to arrive in the Ukrainian-controlled city of Zaporizhzhia on Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Sunday.
“Today, for the first time in all the days of the war, this vitally needed (humanitarian) corridor has started to function,” Zelenskyy said in a pre-recorded speech posted on his Telegram messaging channel.
There were concerns about the safety of the evacuees. People fleeing Russian-occupied areas in the past have described their vehicles being fired upon, and Ukrainian officials have repeatedly accused Russian forces of shelling agreed-upon evacuation routes.
A Ukrainian defender of the steel plant urged groups such as the UN and the Red Cross to ensure the safety of the evacuees. Sviatoslav Palamar, deputy commander of the Azov Regiment, told The Associated Press in an interview that there should be guarantees from “a third party, politicians, world leaders, that they will cooperate to negotiate with the Russians to get us out of here.”
Another of the plant’s defenders said Russian forces resumed shelling the plant on Sunday as soon as the evacuation of a group of civilians was completed.
Denys Shlega, commander of the Ukrainian National Guard’s 12th Operational Brigade, said in a televised interview late Sunday 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.
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 maternity hospital was hit by a Russian airstrike in the first weeks of the war, and hundreds of people were reported killed in a theater bombardment.
The city is a key target due to its strategic location near the Crimean peninsula, which Russia seized from Ukraine in 2014.
Palamar, the Ukrainian commander, told the AP on Sunday that it has been difficult to even reach some of the wounded at the steel plant.
There is debris. We don’t have special equipment. It is difficult for soldiers to lift slabs that weigh tons with just their arms,” he said. “We hear voices of people who are still alive” inside shattered buildings.
UN humanitarian spokesman Saviano Abreu said civilians arriving in Zaporizhzhia, some 230 kilometers (140 miles) northwest of Mariupol, will receive immediate humanitarian support, including psychological services. A Médecins Sans Frontières team was at a reception center for displaced people in Zaporizhzhia, preparing for the arrival of the UN convoy.
Palamar called for the evacuation of wounded Ukrainian fighters and civilians.
“We don’t know why they are not taken away, and their evacuation to Ukrainian-controlled territory is not discussed,” he said in a video posted on the regiment’s Telegram channel on Saturday.
Along with his Azov regiment, Palamar said, the plant is being defended by marines, police, border guards, coast guards and more. He said that the bodies of the killed Ukrainian fighters remain inside the plant. “Because we believe that we will be able to transfer them to the territory controlled by the Ukrainian government. We have to do everything possible to bury the heroes with honors.”
US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other US lawmakers visited Zelenskyy on Saturday to show US support for Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s invasion. She is the highest-ranking US lawmaker to travel to the country since the Russian invasion on February 24.
In his late-night speech on Sunday, Zelenskyy accused Moscow of waging “a war of extermination,” saying Russian shelling had hit food, grain and fertilizer warehouses and residential neighborhoods in Kharkiv, Donbas and other regions.
He also said that more than 350,000 people have been evacuated during the war from combat zones thanks to humanitarian corridors previously agreed with Moscow. “The organization of humanitarian corridors is one of the elements of the negotiation process that is underway,” he said.
In Zaporizhzhia, residents ignored air raid sirens to visit cemeteries on Sunday, as Ukrainians observed the Orthodox Christian day of the dead.
“If our dead could get up and see this, they would say: ‘No way, they are worse than the Germans,'” said Hennadiy Bondarenko, 61, as he celebrated the day with his family at a picnic table among the graves. “All our dead would join the fight, including the Cossacks.”
Russian forces embarked on a major military operation to seize significant parts of southern and eastern Ukraine after failing to capture the capital, kyiv. Their offensive has pitted Ukrainian forces fighting village by village and civilians fleeing airstrikes and artillery shelling.
Ukrainian intelligence officials accused Russian forces of seizing medical facilities to treat wounded Russian soldiers in several occupied cities, as well as destroying medical infrastructure.
Getting a full picture of the unfolding battle in eastern Ukraine is difficult because the fighting has made it dangerous for reporters to move around, and both sides have introduced strict restrictions on reporting from the combat zone.
But Western military analysts have suggested the Russian offensive was going much slower than planned. So far, Russian troops and Russian-backed separatists appear to have made only minor gains in the month since the eastern offensive began.
Hundreds of millions of dollars in military assistance have flowed into Ukraine during the war, but Russia’s vast arsenals mean Ukraine will continue to need large amounts of support. With plenty of firepower still in reserve, Russia’s offensive could be stepped up. Overall, the Russian military has an estimated 900,000 active-duty personnel and a much larger air force and navy.
Meanwhile, in recent weeks there have been several fires and explosions in the Russian regions near the border. On Sunday, an explosive device damaged a railway bridge in the Kursk region, which borders Ukraine, and a criminal investigation was launched, the region’s government said.
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Fisch reported from Sloviansk. Associated Press writers Jon Gambrell and Yuras Karmanau in Lviv, Mstyslav Chernov in Kharkiv, and AP staff around the world contributed to this report.
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