People fleeing besieged Mariupol described weeks of bombardments and deprivations as they arrived yesterday in Ukrainian-held territory, where relief workers awaited the first group of civilians freed from a steel plant that is last redoubt of Ukrainian fighters in the devastated port city.
Video posted online on Sunday by Ukrainian forces showed elderly women and mothers with small children climbing over a steep pile of rubble from the sprawling Azovstal steel plant and eventually boarding a bus.
More than 100 civilians from the plant were yesterday expected to arrive in Zaporizhzhia, 230km northwest of Mariupol, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said.
Photo: EPA-EFE
The evacuation, if successful, would represent rare progress in easing the human cost of the war, which has caused particular suffering in Mariupol.
Previous attempts to open safe corridors out of the city on the Sea of Azov and other places have broken down.
“Today, for the first time in all the days of the war, this vitally needed green corridor has started working,” Zelenskiy said on Sunday in a prerecorded address on Telegram.
Photo: Reuters
At least some of the people evacuated from the plant were apparently taken to a village controlled by Moscow-backed separatists, although Russian state media reported that they would be allowed to continue on to Ukrainian-held territory if they wanted to.
In the past, Ukrainian officials have accused Moscow’s troops of forcibly relocating civilians from areas they have captured to Russia; Moscow has said the people wanted to go to Russia.
Many people have managed to flee Mariupol under their own steam in the past few weeks, but others have been unable to escape.
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