ZAPORIZHE, Ukraine (AP) – A long-awaited effort to evacuate people from a steel plant in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol was under way on Sunday, the UN said, while House Speaker Nancy Pelosi revealed she had visited Ukraine’s president to show unwavering American support for the country’s defense against Russian aggression.
UN humanitarian spokesman Saviano Abreu told the Associated Press that the operation to remove people from Azovstal’s extensive steel plant was being carried out with the International Committee of the Red Cross and in co-ordination with Ukrainian and Russian officials.
It is estimated that about 100,000 people are still in blockaded Mariupol, including up to 1,000 civilians who were pressed by about 2,000 Ukrainian fighters under a Soviet-era steel plant – the only part of the city not occupied by the Russians.
Like other evacuations, the success of the Mariupol mission depends on Russia and its forces stationed at a long line of checkpoints before reaching Ukraine.
Zaporozhye, a city about 141 miles (227 kilometers) northwest of Mariupol, was the destination of evacuation efforts, Abreu said. He said women, children and the elderly – who have been blocked for nearly two months – will be evacuated to the city, where they will receive immediate humanitarian support, including psychological services.
Mariupol experienced some of the worst suffering of the war. A maternity hospital was hit by a deadly Russian air strike in the first weeks of the war, and hundreds of people were reported killed in the bombing of a theater where civilians were hiding.
“As operations are still ongoing, we will not provide more details at this stage to ensure the safety of civilians and humanitarian personnel in the convoy,” Abreu said of the evacuation.
“The UN will also continue to insist on the safe passage from the city of Mariupol for all those civilians who wish to leave,” he said.
The UN said the convoy to evacuate civilians began on Friday, traveling about 140 miles (230 kilometers), before reaching the Mariupol plant on Saturday morning.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Twitter on Sunday afternoon that the first group of about 100 people had set off for Ukrainian-controlled territory.
“Tomorrow we will meet them in Zaporozhye. Thank you to our team! Now they, together with #UN, are working on the evacuation of other civilians from the plant, “he tweeted.
A team of Doctors Without Borders was at the Zaporozhye Resettlement Reception Center on Sunday, preparing for the arrival of the UN convoy if it succeeds. Stress, exhaustion and low food supplies have probably weakened the health of civilians trapped underground at the steel plant.
People fleeing Russian-occupied areas have described their vehicles being shelled, and Ukrainian authorities have repeatedly accused Russian forces of shelling evacuation routes agreed by the two sides.
Russia’s large-scale offensive in coastal southern Ukraine and the country’s eastern industrial center has forced Ukrainian forces to fight village by village and more civilians fleeing air strikes and artillery fire.
Pelosi, a Democrat from California who is the second successor to the president, is the top US lawmaker to travel to Ukraine since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24. Her Saturday visit came just days after Russia fired rockets into the capital during a visit by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
During a Sunday news conference in the Polish city of Rzeszow, Pelosi said she and other members of a US congressional delegation met with Zelensky in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, for three hours and brought him “a message of gratitude from the American people for his leadership ”
Representative Jason Crowe, a U.S. Army veteran and member of the House Intelligence and Armed Services Committees, said he came to Ukraine with three areas of focus: “Weapons, Weapons and Weapons.”
“We need to make sure that Ukrainians have what they need to win. “What we’ve seen in the last two months is their ferocity, their strong pride, their ability to fight and their ability to win if they have the support,” said the Colorado Democrat.
Russian forces have launched a major military operation to capture large parts of southern and eastern Ukraine after their failure to capture the capital, Kyiv. Mariupol, a port city on the Sea of Azov, is a key destination due to its strategic location near the Crimean peninsula, which Russia took from Ukraine in 2014.
“All the leaders of the free world know what Russia has done with Mariupol. And Russia will not go unpunished for that, “Zelensky said in his evening video address. He warned that Russia was “gathering additional forces for new attacks on our military in the east of the country.”
Limited evacuations from the city took place on Saturday, but details were unclear given the number of countries involved in the talks and the volatile situation on the ground.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said a total of 46 people had been evacuated from areas near the Azovstal plant.
On Saturday, Ukrainian Regiment Deputy Commander Sviatoslav Palamar called for the evacuation of wounded Ukrainian fighters as well as civilians. “We do not know why they were not taken away and their evacuation to the territory controlled by Ukraine is not being discussed,” he said in a video posted on the regiment’s Telegram channel.
Unafraid of air raid sirens and home warnings, people in Zaporizhia visited the cemetery on Sunday as Ukrainians celebrate Orthodox Day of the Dead.
“If our dead could get up and see this, they would say, ‘It’s not possible, they’re worse than the Germans,'” said 61-year-old Gennady Bondarenko as he celebrated the day with his family at a picnic table among the graves. . “All our victims will join the battle, including the Cossacks.
Getting a complete picture of the unfolding battle in eastern Ukraine was difficult because air strikes and artillery shelling made the movement of reporters extremely dangerous. In addition, both Ukraine and Moscow-backed insurgents have imposed strict restrictions on reporting from the war zone.
But Western military analysts suggest the offensive in the Donbass region, which includes Mariupol, is much slower than planned. So far, Russian troops and separatists appear to have made little progress in the month since Moscow said it would focus its military forces to the east.
Videos and images from inside the Mariupol steel plant shared with the AP by two Ukrainian women who said their husbands were among the fighters who refused to surrender there show unidentified men with dirty bandages; others had open wounds or amputated limbs.
Skeletal medical personnel have treated at least 600 wounded, said the women, who identified their husbands as members of the Azov Regiment of the National Guard of Ukraine. Some of the wounds rotted with gangrene, they said.
The AP could not independently verify the date and location of the video, which the women said was shot last week in a maze of corridors and bunkers below the plant.
Meanwhile, a fire broke out on Sunday at a Russian Defense Ministry site in the southern Belgorod region, about 30km from the Ukrainian border, the Belgorod regional governor said.
In a Telegram post, Vyacheslav Gladkov said emergency services were working at the site, where he said one resident had suffered minor injuries and seven apartment buildings had suffered “varying degrees of damage”.
The Ministry of Defense did not immediately comment on the incident.
Separately, the governor of Russia’s Kursk region, which also borders Ukraine, told the Telegram on Sunday that a railway bridge on a regional line used by freight trains had been damaged in an “act of sabotage”. Roman Starovoit did not identify the alleged perpetrators, but said criminal proceedings had been instituted in the case.
Hundreds of millions of dollars of military aid have entered Ukraine since the start of the war, but Russia’s huge arms depots mean Ukraine will continue to need huge amounts of support.
In the days before the war, Western intelligence estimated that Russia had positioned up to 190,000 troops near the border; Ukraine’s permanent military numbers about 200,000 people scattered throughout the country.
With much firepower still in reserve, Russia’s offensive could still intensify and conquer the Ukrainians. In total, the Russian army has about 900,000 troops. Russia also has a much larger air force and navy.
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Fish reported from Slavyansk. Associated Press journalists John Gambrell and Juras Karmanau of Lviv, Mstislav Chernov of Kharkiv, Lolita K. Baldor of Washington, Trisha Thompson of Rome and PA officials around the world contributed to the report.
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