Evacuations underway in Mariupol; Pelosi visits Ukraine
ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine — A long-awaited effort to evacuate civilians from a steel plant in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol was underway Sunday, the United Nations said, while 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.
U.N. humanitarian spokesman Saviano Abreu told The Associated Press that 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.
As many as 100,000 people are believed to still be in blockaded Mariupol, including up to 1,000 civilians who were hunkered down with an estimated 2,000 Ukrainian fighters beneath the Soviet-era steel plant — the only part of the city not occupied by the Russians.
The fate of the Ukrainian fighters was not immediately clear.
Like other evacuations, success of the mission in Mariupol depended on Russia and its forces, deployed along a long series of checkpoints before reaching Ukrainian ones.
Zaporizhzhia, a city about 141 miles northwest of Mariupol, was the destination of the evacuation effort, Abreu said. He said women, children and the elderly — who have been stranded for nearly two months — will be evacuated to the city, where they will receive immediate humanitarian support, including psychological services.
Mariupol has seen some of the worst suffering of the war.
A maternity hospital was hit with a lethal Russian airstrike in the opening weeks of the war, and about 300 people were reported killed in the bombing of a theater where civilians were taking shelter.
Abreu said U.N. officials would not provide additional details of the evacuation “to guarantee the safety of the civilians and humanitarians in the convoy.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a tweet earlier Sunday that the first group of about 100 people was headed to Ukrainian-controlled territory.
Meanwhile, Pelosi, a California Democrat who is second in line to succeed the president, 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.
During a Sunday news conference in the Polish city of Rzeszow, Pelosi said 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.”
Rep. Jason Crow, a U.S. Army veteran and a member of the House intelligence and armed services committees, said he came to Ukraine with three areas of focus: “Weapons, weapons and weapons.”
“We have to make sure the Ukrainians have what they need to win. What we have seen in the last two months is their ferocity, their intense pride, their ability to fight and their ability to win if they have the support to do so,” the Colorado Democrat said.