Ukraine War: ‘A ceasefire has occurred’ as over 100 civilians are evacuated from besieged Mariupol steelworks in ‘safe passage operation’


A long-awaited operation to evacuate civilians from the Azovstal steel plant in the southeastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol is finally underway.

Sviatoslav Palamar, deputy commander of the Azov Regiment, said “there has finally been a ceasefire.”

He said he expected evacuations from the steel mill to continue until everyone at the plant, civilians and soldiers, had escaped.

The Azov Regiment, an all-volunteer infantry military unit, is helping to defend the last section of the besieged port city not occupied by Vladimir Putin’s forces.

‘Operation Safe Passage’ underway in Mariupol, UN confirms – Ukraine News Live

“There was no ceasefire earlier despite the enemy’s statements about it. At the same time, we faced mortar shelling. For the past two days we can say that a ceasefire did indeed happen at the announced time,” he said.

He added that the Azovstal plant is strewn with mines, rockets, artillery shells and unexploded cluster devices, and is being defended by the 36th Marine Brigade, police officers, border guards, coast guards and more.

“Some of them protect the territory, some prevent attempted attacks, some are responsible for a ceasefire, some help clear rubble under shelling,” he said.

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  • Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the US House of Representatives, meets with President Zelenskyy in kyiv
  • The UK ambassador feels “comfortable” after returning to the capital, despite Russian threats.
  • Energy ministers of EU countries to hold emergency talks on Monday
  • Wives of Mariupol defenders call for evacuation of soldiers
  • Germany promises to stop using Russian oil exports by the end of the summer
The situation on May 1
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Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

The deputy commander said that the presence of children and civilians has made the fight difficult and that there are many wounded in the plant.

He said there is not enough water and the air smells of decomposing bodies.

As for the challenges in the next stages of evacuation, he said there is a lot of debris and they don’t have “special equipment” to remove it.

Deputy Commander of the Azov Regiment Svyatoslav Palamar issues a video statement from Mariupol
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Deputy Commander of the Azov Regiment Svyatoslav Palamar issues a video statement from Mariupol

“It is difficult for soldiers to lift slabs that weigh tons with just their arms,” ​​he said.

Palamar said the fighters at the plant will continue to resist until they receive an order not to.

Images posted online by Ukrainian forces showed elderly women and mothers with young children wrapped in winter clothing being helped up a pile of rubble from the steel plant rubble, before boarding a bus.

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Humanitarian corridor ‘working for the first time’

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said more than 100 civilians, mostly women and children, were due to arrive in the Ukrainian-controlled city of Zaporizhzhia on Monday.

“Today, for the first time in all the days of the war, this vitally needed (humanitarian) corridor has started to function,” he said in a pre-recorded speech posted on his Telegram messaging app channel.

A UN spokesman said the “safe passage operation” began on Saturday and was being coordinated with the Red Cross, Russia and Ukraine.

Zelenskyy tweeted: “Grateful to our team! Now they, together with #UN, are working on evacuating other civilians from the plant.”

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Evacuation under steelworks

On Sunday, a convoy of Russian and UN military vehicles took more than 50 people to tents in the town of Bezimenne, about 18 miles (30 km) east of Mariupol, according to Reuters.

More evacuations in Mariupol

Meanwhile, the Mariupol City Council said on Telegram that the evacuation of civilians from other parts of the city would start on Monday morning.

People fleeing Russian-occupied areas previously described having their vehicles shot at, while Ukrainian officials repeatedly accused Putin’s forces of shelling evacuation routes the two sides had agreed upon.

One of the defenders of the Azovstal plant said Russian forces had resumed shelling the plant on Sunday shortly after the evacuation of a group of civilians.

Denys Shlega, commander of the 12th Operational Brigade of the National Guard of Ukraine, said Sunday night that several hundred civilians remain trapped along with nearly 500 wounded soldiers and “numerous” bodies.

Around 100,000 civilians are still in the larger city of Mariupol, where thousands of Ukrainians have been killed in relentless attacks that have devastated residential neighborhoods.

And some 1,000 civilians are believed to have barricaded themselves with some 2,000 Ukrainian fighters under the Soviet-era steel plant.

Civilians leaving the area near Azovstal pictured with pro-Russian troops in Bezimenne, some 18 miles east of Mariupol.
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Civilians who have fled the area near Azovstal are shown with pro-Russian troops in Bezimenne, some 18 miles east of Mariupol.

On the battlefield

Elsewhere, an explosive device damaged a railway bridge on Sunday in Russia’s Kursk region, which borders Ukraine, according to the region’s government.

It follows a series of recent fires and explosions in Russian regions near the border.

In the Donetsk region, four civilians were killed and 11 more wounded by Russian shelling on Sunday, Ukraine’s regional governor said.

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Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko wrote in a Telegram post that the deaths and seven of the injuries occurred in the northern city of Lyman.

He added that another person also died in the city of Bakhmut from injuries received in the Luhansk region.

In his late-night speech on Sunday, President Zelenskyy accused Moscow of waging “a war of extermination” in reference to attacks on non-military targets.

He said Russian shelling had hit food, grain and fertilizer warehouses and residential neighborhoods in Kharkiv, Donbas and other regions.

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Russian advance ‘has stalled in the east’

“The targets they choose prove once again that the war against Ukraine is a war of extermination for the Russian army,” he said.

His comments came as the Ukrainian military said a Russian offensive along a wide front in the country’s east was stalling following human and material losses inflicted by Ukrainian forces.

In a Facebook post, Ukraine’s military said Russian troops were trying to advance in the Sloboda, Donetsk and Tauride regions, but were being stopped by Ukrainian forces and continue to fight village by village.



Reference-news.sky.com

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