Some civilians finally leave Mariupol plant
US lawmaker Pelosi visits Kyiv, vows help; Russia introduces the rouble in occupied region in the south
KYIV/BEZIMENNE: Around 100 Ukrainian civilians were being evacuated from a ruined steelworks in the city of Mariupol on Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said, after the United Nations had confirmed a “safe passage operation” was in progress there.
Mariupol, a strategic port city on the Azov Sea, has endured the most destructive siege of the war, with Pope Francis, in an implicit criticism of Russia, telling thousands of people in St Peter’s Square on Sunday it had been “barbarously bombarded”.
“Grateful to our team! Now they, together with (United Nations), are working on the evacuation of other civilians from the plant,” Zelensky tweeted. The evacuees would reach the Ukrainian-controlled city of Zaporizhzhia on Monday, he said.
With fighting stretching along a broad front in southern and eastern Ukraine, US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi pledged continued US support for Ukraine when she met Zelensky in an unannounced visit to Kyiv.
Russia, meanwhile, said it had destroyed a stock of Westernsupplied weapons at an airfield near Odessa, in southern Ukraine.
In Mariupol, Russia declared victory on April 21 even as hundreds of holdout Ukrainian troops and civilians took shelter in the city’s Azovstal steel works, where they have been trapped with little food, water or medicine. Negotiations to evacuate the civilians had repeatedly broken down in recent weeks, with Russia and Ukraine blaming each other.
But on Sunday, more than 50 civilians arrived at a temporary accommodation centre after escaping from Mariupol, a Reuters photographer said.
The civilians arrived on buses at the Russian-held village of Bezimenne, around 30km, east of Mariupol.