Evacuations from Mariupol carried out
ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine — The long-awaited effort to evacuate civilians from a steel plant in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol was underway Sunday, as U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi revealed she visited Ukraine’s president to show unflinching American support for the country’s defense against Russian aggression.
Video posted online by Ukrainian forces showed elderly women and mothers with small children bundled in winter clothing being helped as they climbed up a steep pile of debris from the plant’s rubble, and then eventually boarding a bus.
U.N. humanitarian spokesman Saviano Abreu said the operation to bring civilians out of the sprawling Azovstal steel plant was being carried out with the International Committee of the Red Cross and in coordination with Ukrainian and Russian officials.
The evacuation drew praise from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who said more than 100 civilians — primarily women and children — were expected to arrive in the Ukrainiancontrolled city of Zaporizhzhia on Monday.
“Today, for the first time in all the days of the war, this vitally needed (humanitarian) corridor has started working,” he said in a pre-recorded address published on his Telegram channel.
Later Sunday, one of the plant’s defenders said Russian forces resumed shelling the plant as soon as the evacuation of a group of civilians was completed.
Denys Shlega, the commander of the 12th Operational Brigade of Ukraine’s National Guard, said in a televised interview Sunday night that several hundred civilians remain trapped alongside nearly 500 wounded soldiers and “numerous” dead bodies.
Meanwhile, Pelosi visited Kyiv on Saturday, the most senior American lawmaker to travel to the country since Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion. Her visit came just days after Russia launched rockets at the capital during a visit by U.N. Secretary-general Antonio Guterres.
Pelosi told a news conference Sunday in the Polish city of Rzeszow that she and other members of a U.S. congressional delegation met with Zelenskyy and brought him “a message of appreciation from the American people for his leadership.”
In his nightly televised address Sunday, Zelenskyy said more than 350,000 people had been evacuated from combat zones thanks to humanitarian corridors pre-agreed with Moscow since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “The organization of humanitarian corridors is one of the elements of the negotiation process (with Russia), which is ongoing,” he said.
Zelenskyy also accused Moscow of waging “a war of extermination,” saying Russian shelling had hit food, grain and fertilizer warehouses, and residential neighborhoods in the Kharkiv, Donbas and other regions.
“What could be Russia’s strategic success in this war? Honestly, I do not know. The ruined lives of people and the burned or stolen property will give nothing to Russia,” he said.