More than 100 people – including elderly women and mothers with young children – left the rubble of the Azovstal steel plant on Sunday and boarded buses and ambulances for the Ukrainian-controlled city of Zaporizhzhia, about 140 miles (230 kilometers) northwest. according to authorities and video released by both sides. Mariupol Deputy Mayor Sergei Orloff told the BBC that the evacuees were making slow progress and were unlikely to reach Zaporizhia on Monday, as expected. Authorities did not provide any explanation for the delay. At least some of the civilians were apparently relocated to a Russian-backed separatist village. The Russian military says some have chosen to remain in separatist areas, while dozens have fled to Ukrainian-occupied territories. In the past, Ukraine has accused Moscow troops of transporting civilians against their will to Russia or to Russian-controlled areas. The Kremlin denied it. The Russian bombardment of the extensive factory by air, tank and ship resumed after the partial evacuation, said the Azov Battalion of Ukraine, which defends the mill, in the Telegram messaging application. Orloff said high-level talks were under way between Ukraine, Russia and international organizations to remove more people. The evacuation of the steel plant, if successful, would represent rare progress in reducing the human cost of the nearly 10-week war, which has caused particular pain in Mariupol. Earlier attempts to open safe corridors outside the southern port city and elsewhere have collapsed, with Ukrainian officials blaming Russian forces for shootings and bombings along the agreed evacuation routes. Prior to the evacuation at the weekend, under the supervision of the United Nations and the Red Cross, about 1,000 civilians were believed to be in the factory along with about 2,000 Ukrainian defenders. Russia demanded that the fighters surrender. have refused. Up to 100,000 people in total may still be in Mariupol, which had a population of over 400,000 before the war. Russian forces have hit much of the city in ruins, trapping civilians with little food, water, heat or medicine. Some Mariupol residents left the city on their own, often with damaged private cars. As sunset approached, Yaroslav Dmytryshyn, a resident of Mariupol, jumped into a reception center in Zaporizhzhia with a car with a rear seat full of young people and two signs stuck in the rear window: “Children” and “Little ones”. “I can not believe we survived,” he said, looking worn but in good spirits for their safe arrival after two days on the road. “There is no Mariupol at all,” he said. “Someone has to rebuild it and it will take millions of tons of gold.” He said they lived right across the railroad from the steel plant. “It was destroyed,” he said. “The factory is completely lost.” Anastasiia Dembytska, who took advantage of the ceasefire to leave with her daughter, nephew and dog, said her family survived by cooking on a makeshift stove and drinking water from a well. She said she could see the steelwork through her window when she dared to look outside. “We saw the rockets flying,” and smoke clouds over the factory, he said. With most of Mariupol in ruins, the majority of Russian battalion regiments around the city have moved north to other battlefields in eastern Ukraine, according to a senior U.S. defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity. the Pentagon evaluation. . In other news, European Union energy ministers met on Monday to discuss new sanctions against the Kremlin, which could include restrictions on Russian oil. However, some Russia-dependent members of the 27-nation bloc, including Hungary and Slovakia, are reluctant to take tough action. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he hoped more people would be able to leave Mariupol for an evacuation on Monday. The city council told residents they wanted to leave to gather at a mall to wait for buses. Zelenski told Greek state television that civilians remaining at the steel plant were afraid to board buses because they feared they would be taken to Russia. He said he had been assured by the UN that they would be allowed to go to areas controlled by his government. Dennis Slegka, commander of the 12th Operational Brigade of the National Guard of Ukraine, said in a television interview that several hundred civilians were trapped along with nearly 500 wounded soldiers and “many” corpses. “Dozens of young children are still in the warehouses under the factory,” Slegga said. Failing to seize Kyiv, the capital, Russian President Vladimir Putin has turned his attention to Donbass, the eastern industrial heart of Ukraine, where Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian forces since 2014. Russia said it had hit dozens of military targets in the region over the past day. It said it had hit troop depots and an ammunition depot near Chervone in the Zaporizhzhia region, west of Donbas. Ukrainian and Western officials say Moscow’s troops are falling indiscriminately, costing civilians dearly and making only slow progress. Zelensky’s office said at least three people had been killed in Donbas in the past 24 hours. The regional administration in Zaporizhzhia reported that at least two people had been killed in Russian bombing. The governor of the Odessa region along the Black Sea coast, Maxim Martchenko, told the Telegram that a Russian rocket attack on an Odessa infrastructure target on Monday had caused deaths and injuries. He did not give details. According to the secretary of the National Security Council of Ukraine, Oleksiy Danilov, the rocket attack took the roof of a church belonging to the Ukrainian Orthodox faction that is loyal to the Moscow Patriarchate. Ukraine said Russia had also struck a strategic road and rail bridge west of Odessa. The bridge was badly damaged by previous Russian strikes and its destruction would cut off a supply route for weapons and other cargo from neighboring Romania. The attack in Odessa came eight years after deadly clashes between supporters of the Ukrainian government and protesters demanding autonomy in the east of the country. Supporters of the government in 2014 bombed a union building containing pro-autonomy protesters, killing more than 40 people. Also Monday, Ukraine claimed to have destroyed two small Russian patrol cars in the Black Sea. Mariupol, located in Donbass, is the key to Russia’s campaign in the east. Its capture will deprive Ukraine of a vital port, allow Russia to build a land corridor to the Crimean peninsula, which it occupied from Ukraine in 2014, and free troops to fight in other parts of the region. It is difficult to capture a complete picture of the battle unfolding in eastern Ukraine. The fighting has made the circulation of journalists dangerous, and both sides have imposed strict restrictions on reports from the battle zone. However, the British Ministry of Defense said it believed that more than a quarter of all combat units Russia has deployed in Ukraine are now “ineffective for battle” – they can not fight due to the loss of troops or equipment.
Varenytsia reported from Kyiv, Ukraine. Associated Press reporters Yesica Fisch in Sloviansk, Jon Gambrell and Yuras Karmanau in Lviv, Mstyslav Chernov in Kharkiv, Lolita Baldor in Washington and AP staff around the world contributed to this report.
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