Zaporizhia, Ukraine (AP) – Mariupol fugitives described weeks of bombing and bombing when they arrived in occupied Ukraine on Monday, where officers and aid workers eagerly awaited the first group of civilians who evacuate from a steel mill. The last stronghold of Ukrainian warriors in the destroyed port city.
A video posted on the Internet by Ukrainian forces on Sunday showed elderly women and mothers climbing a steep pile of rubble from an Azovstal steel mill with small children and riding of the bus.
According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, more than 100 civilians from the bombed factory are expected to arrive in Zaporizhia, 140 miles (230 kilometers) northwest of Mariupol.
“Now, for the first time in all the days of the war, this important green corridor has begun to function,” he said in a video speech on Sunday.
However, at least some of the people evacuated from the factory on Sunday were taken to a village controlled by Moscow -backed separatists. The Russian military said some chose to remain in separatist areas, while dozens fled to Ukrainian-controlled territory. The information could not be verified independently.
In the past, Ukraine has accused Moscow troops of bringing civilians to Russia against their will. Moscow said people wanted to go to Russia.
The evacuation of the steel mill, if successful, represents a remarkable advance in mitigating human costs in the nearly 10 -week war that has caused special suffering in Mariupol. Previous attempts to open safe corridors from the Sea of Azov and elsewhere have failed, with Ukrainian officials repeatedly accusing Russian forces of shooting and bombing agreed routes. of evacuation.
Prior to the weekend evacuation, which was controlled by the United Nations and the Red Cross, an estimated 1,000 civilians and about 2,000 Ukrainian fighters were present at the steel plant. Up to 100,000 people are still located in Mariupol, where there were more than 400,000 before the war.
In other news, EU energy ministers met on Monday to discuss new sanctions against the Kremlin, which could include Russia’s oil restrictions, but bloc members of 27 countries, including Hungary and Slovakia, are wary against more stringent measures.
Zelensky said he hopes more people will be able to leave Mariupol following the organized evacuation on Monday. The city council told residents they wanted to leave to gather at the mall to wait for buses.
As before, when the official evacuation was delayed, some escaped from Mariupol while others were detained.
“People cannot leave without a car. “They were desperate,” said Olena Gibbert, who was among those who arrived at Zaporizhia’s UN-backed center in dusty and frequently damaged private vehicles. “You have to go to them. People have nothing.”
He said many people in Mariupol still wanted to flee the Russian-controlled city, but they could not say so openly in an atmosphere of ongoing pro-Moscow propaganda.
Anastasia Dembitska, who took advantage of a brief ceasefire while evacuating civilians from an iron mill to travel with her son, grandson and dog, said her family survived by preparing a dish and drinking water from the well.
He said the plant could be seen from his window when he dared to look outside.
“We saw rockets flying” and clouds of smoke over the factory, he said.
Russian forces bombed large parts of the city, cutting off civilians with little food, water, heat or medicine.
Zelensky told Greek state television that citizens who remained at the steel plant were afraid to ride buses because they thought they would be taken to Russia. He said the UN had assured them that they would be able to reach areas under his control.
In an attempt to seize the capital Kiev, President Vladimir Putin shifted his focus to the Donbas, Ukraine’s eastern industrial center, where Moscow -backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian forces since 2014.
Russia said its troops hit dozens of military targets in the region just yesterday. He said he hit a concentration of troops and weapons and an ammunition depot near Chervon in the Zaporizhia region west of the Donbas.
Ukrainian and Western officials said Moscow troops were raining fire indiscriminately, inflicting heavy casualties on civilians as they advanced slowly.
According to the administration of the President of Ukraine, at least three people have been killed and seven, including a child, have been injured in the past 24 hours in the Donbas. According to the Zaporizhia regional administration, at least two people were killed and four were injured in the Russian bombing.
The Ukrainian military said on Monday that it had destroyed two small Russian patrol boats in the Black Sea. Drone footage posted on the Internet showed what Ukrainians described as the boat of two Russian Raptors, which exploded after being hit by missiles. The AP could not independently confirm the footage.
Mariupol, located in the Donbass, is the main rural area of Russia in the East. Its acquisition would take up an important port in Ukraine, allow Moscow to build a land corridor on the Crimean peninsula, which it took from Ukraine in 2014 and deployed troops to fight elsewhere in the region.
According to a Ukrainian defender, after being evacuated from the city’s steel mill, Russian forces resumed shelling on Sunday.
Denis Schlega, commander of the 12th operational brigade of the Ukrainian National Guard, said in a televised interview that several hundred civilians had been trapped by about 500 wounded soldiers and “many” corpses.
“Several dozen small children were in bunkers under the factory,” Schlega said.
It is difficult to get a complete picture of the ongoing struggle in eastern Ukraine. The fighting was dangerous for journalists to get around and both sides imposed strict restrictions on coverage from the combat zone.
But the British Defense Ministry said it believed more than a quarter of all Russian troops assigned to Ukraine were “ineffective in combat” – unable to fight back due to the loss of troops or equipment.
Ukraine said Russia had also hit a strategic road and railway bridge west of the Black Sea port of Odessa. The bridge had already been damaged during previous Russian attacks and its destruction had disrupted the supply route. of weapons and other cargo from neighboring Romania.
Ukrainian and Western officials have expressed concern that Russia could use the region to open up a new battlefield.
Reported by Varenicia from Kiev, Ukraine. Associated Press reporters Jessica Fish in Slovyansk, John Gambrel and Yura Karmanau in Lviv, Mstislav Chernov in Kharkov, and AP staff around the world contributed to this report.
Source: Huffpost
