The evacuation of more civilians from the Azovstal steel plant in the besieged Ukrainian port city of Mariupol has begun.
“The next stage of rescuing our people from Azovstal is under way at the moment,” Andriy Yermak, head of the Ukrainian presidential staff, said Friday.
There were scant details, however, about the operation.
“Information about the results will be provided later,” Andriy said.
On Thursday, fighting raged at the steel plant. Ukrainian fighters held on as Russian soldiers entered the plant despite a Russian pledge for a daytime cease-fire to allow more of the 200 civilians trapped in the facility to be safely evacuated.
Russian forces control all but the steel works in the devastated city on the north coast of the Sea of Azov. It has been repeatedly targeted by Russia during its 10-week offensive.
Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s Internal Affairs Ministry, said Russian troops stormed the plant through its tunnels with the help of an electrician who knew the layout.
Russia denied that its forces had entered the plant, and in turn, it accused the Ukrainians of not allowing civilians to leave. About 100 civilians have been evacuated from the industrial facility in recent days.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said it was Russia’s attack that was keeping an estimated 200 civilians pinned down in the plant’s underground bunkers.
“Just imagine this hell! And there are children there,” he said late Thursday in his nightly video address. “More than two months of constant shelling, bombing, constant death.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin had earlier assured Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett in a phone call that Moscow’s forces were prepared to allow safe passage for those trapped in the steel plant, with daytime pauses in fighting through Saturday.
But in an online video, Captain Sviatoslav Palamar, a deputy commander of Ukraine’s Azov Regiment, said, “Heavy, bloody fighting is going on. Yet again, the Russians have not kept the promise of a cease-fire and have not given an opportunity for the civilians who seek shelter … in basements of the plant to evacuate.” It was not clear from where he was speaking.
Zelenskyy, in an address Thursday morning, said a long cease-fire was needed to evacuate Mariupol’s remaining civilians.
“It will take time simply to lift people out of those basements, out of those underground shelters. In the present conditions, we cannot use heavy equipment to clear the rubble away. It all has to be done by hand,” he said.
In Washington, State Department spokesperson Ned Price expressed skepticism about Russia’s commitment to a cease-fire.
“What we have consistently seen, and we’ve seen this even in recent days, is the tendency on the part of the Russian Federation to embrace a so-called humanitarian pause to cloak itself in the guise of an actor that has humanitarian concerns — only to quickly and promptly resume shelling and violence, including against civilians who are trapped in besieged areas, including in Mariupol.”
The United Nations said Wednesday that the more than 300 civilians evacuated from Mariupol, Manhush, Berdiansk, Tokmak and Vasylivka were receiving humanitarian assistance in Zaporizhzhia.
“While this second evacuation of civilians from areas in Mariupol and beyond is significant, much more must be done to make sure all civilians caught up in fighting can leave, in the direction they wish,” said Osnat Lubrani, the U.N.’s humanitarian coordinator for Ukraine.
Belarus drills
Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko told The Associated Press he did not think Russia’s military action in Ukraine would “drag on this way,” but he accused Ukraine of “provoking Russia” and being uninterested in peace talks. Russian forces used Belarus as a staging point ahead of their February 24 invasion, operating under the pretext of military exercises as Putin denied he would attack Ukraine.
Belarus launched its own military exercises this week, but Lukashenko said they posed no threat.
“We do not threaten anyone, and we are not going to threaten and will not do it,” Lukashenko told the news agency. “Moreover, we can’t threaten — we know who opposes us, so to unleash some kind of a conflict, some kind of war here in the West is absolutely not in the interests of the Belarusian state. So, the West can sleep peacefully.”
Putin may be “trying to rush to a tactical victory” before Victory Day, said the head of Britain’s armed forces, Chief of the Defense Staff Admiral Tony Radakin. But Russian forces are struggling to gain momentum, he said. Russia celebrates Victory Day, which marks the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany, on May 9.
Radakin told British broadcaster Talk TV that Russia is using missiles and weapons at such a rate that it is in a “logistics war” to keep supplied.
“This is going to be a hard slog,” he said.
Meanwhile, the World Food Program has received $26.4 million from the European Union to provide food assistance to people affected by the conflict in Ukraine and for displaced people from Ukraine in the Republic of Moldova.
WFP says over 7.7 million people are displaced inside Ukraine and almost half of the people in the country are worried about finding enough to eat.
Some information came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Press and Reuters.