Attacks resume after evacuation from Azovstal
Zelenskyy and UN working to extricate remaining civilians
Russia resumed shelling of the Azovstal steel works in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol yesterday after about 100 civilians were taken to safety. After nearly two months of siege, civilians holed up at a steel plant in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol began to be evacuated over the weekend, and people sheltering elsewhere in the city were to be allowed out today, local officials said.
Denys Shlega, the commander of the 12th Operational Brigade of Ukraine’s National Guard, said several hundred civilians remain trapped alongside nearly 500 wounded soldiers and “numerous” dead bodies.
“Several dozen small children are still in the bunkers underneath the plant,” Shlega said.
“We need one or two more rounds of evacuation.”
An aide to Mariupol’s mayor said he also had received reports of renewed shelling.
“The cannonade is such that even [on the opposite side of the river] the houses are shaking,” said Petro Andryushenko.
As many as 100,000 people could still be in blockaded Mariupol, including up to 1000 civilians who were hunkered down with an estimated 2000 Ukrainian fighters beneath the Soviet-era steel plant — the only part of the city not occupied by the Russians.
The much-anticipated rescue was mediated by the United Nations shortly after Antonio Guterres, the Secretary-General, visited both Moscow and Kyiv.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the President of Ukraine, said last night: “The first group of about 100 people is already heading to the governmentcontrolled area.”
He said the evacuees were expected to arrive in the central city of Zaporizhzhya today and that Kyiv is working with the UN to ensure the complete evacuation of the plant.
A Russian Defence Ministry video showed a convoy of cars and buses travelling in the dark, marked with a “Z”, the letter used by the invading troops. Dozens of civilians including young children were seen arriving at a temporary accommodation facility in the village of Bezimenne yesterday, which is controlled by pro-Russian separatists. Russian troops and vehicles marked with UN insignia formed the convoy.
State news agency RIA Novosti yesterday showed men and women walking out of buses towards tents on the roadside guarded by Russian soldiers.
On the Ukrainian front line, government officials reported heavy Russian casualties in a major air strike on a Russian command centre in the east. Ukrainian media on Sunday said the air strike had killed Major General Andrei Simonov, commander of electronic warfare in Russia’s Western Military District, reportedly Russia’s 10th general to die in the war.
The strike near the contested town of Izyum likely caused severe casualties among senior Russian officers, and several Ukrainian sources including Arsen Avakov, a
former Interior Minister, suggested that General Valery Gerasimov, head of the Russian General Staff, may have been injured in the strike.
However, there were no independent reports to verify the claim.
The Conflict Intelligence Team, a well-respected group of Russian open-source investigators, yesterday cited data showing several transport planes and helicopters arriving at the border with Ukraine late on Sunday in an indirect confirmation that Russian troops suffered heavy losses in the air strike near Izyum.
The CIT also quoted an unnamed source in the Russian military saying that Gerasimov flew in to Izyum but returned to Moscow unscathed.
Earlier, Russia’s Defence Ministry accused “Ukrainian nationalists” of shelling several villages in the Kherson region, mentioning casualties.
In what appears to be a continuing trend of unexplained attacks on Russian infrastructure in border areas, the governor of the Kursk region said traffic on a section of the local railway was disrupted after a railway bridge collapsed.
“Unfortunately the reports have been confirmed: It was an act of sabotage,” Roman Starovoit said in a video statement.