Russia’s war escalates in eastern Ukraine even as Mariupol ceasefire allows evacuations from Azovstal steel plant

Bakhmut, Ukraine — The evacuation of civilians who have spent two months hiding in tunnels under a sprawling steel mill in the besieged city of Mariupol in southeastern Ukraine resumed on Monday. Some 100 of the estimated 1,000 civilians who have been hiding in the makeshift shelter for weeks of relentless russian bombersHe managed to escape on Sunday, authorities said, and the ceasefire that allowed those evacuations appeared to be holding.

The President of Ukraine said more than 100 civilians had been evacuated from the Azovstal steel plant and were due to arrive in Ukrainian-controlled Zaporizhzhia on Monday, with more evacuations planned. Civilians have been hiding in Soviet-era tunnels beneath the plant along with some 2,000 Ukrainian forces, the last holdouts after Russia’s devastating effort to fully capture the strategic port city of Mariupol.

“For the first time, there were two days of real ceasefire in this territory. More than 100 civilians have already been evacuated, women and children in the first place,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.

As CBS News Senior Foreign Correspondent Charlie D’Agata reports, they emerged as dazed survivors from beneath the rubble and remains of the struck plant.

“I can’t believe it,” Natalia Usmanova said as she stepped out into daylight on Sunday. “Two months of darkness. We didn’t see sunlight. We were very scared.”

Families, many with children and even pets, are among those now making their way to the relative safety of Ukrainian-controlled territory. D’Agata says rescuing him, after so many failed attempts, marks a significant achievement for both the United Nations and the Red Cross, which spent weeks negotiating the humanitarian ceasefire.

It has also raised some hope that lives could be saved in Ukraine, including in besieged cities like Mariupol. But D’Agata says that while the guns fell silent in the port city, fighting continued on the frontline battlefields of eastern Ukraine.

A harsh Russian offensive has forced the few remaining residents of towns like Lyman to flee. There, D’Agata and his team saw volunteers risking their own lives to save others.

Immediately after the CBS News crew left, a Russian airstrike destroyed a railway bridge leading out of the city. It was part of a broader campaign by the Russian military to try to prevent more weapons from the US and other Western nations from reaching Ukrainian forces fighting on the front lines.

However, as fighting intensifies in the eastern Donbas regions, there have been more signs that the war started by President Vladimir Putin is spilling beyond those front lines onto Russian soil. Explosions were reported in the Russian border city of Belgorod, where a social media video captured a military installation on fire.

Russian forces are also being attacked in the water. The Ukrainian Defense Ministry said a new video shown his forces using drones to destroy two high-speed Russian patrol boats in the Black Sea.

However, Ukraine’s exhausted soldiers remain outnumbered and outgunned, and can only hope that the latest $33 billion in heavy weapons pledged of the United States reaches them before the Russian army.