At least 20 civilians, including several children, would leave a badly broken metal factory in the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol on Saturday, which could be the start of a larger and long-awaited evacuation of the latest recalcitrants in the Russian city. . village.
Ukrainian fighters from the Azov Regiment, which defends the site, said the 20 civilians had left, most likely toward the Ukrainians, from the town of Zaporizhzhia, about 225 kilometers (140 miles) to the northwest.
Russia’s Tass news firm published a report, while estimating the number of evacuees at 25.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, vid Borodianka on April 28, 2022, the one of the alleged war crimes committed by Russian troops Photo: AFP/Sergei SUPINSKY
A planned evacuation was underway through the United Nations, it was unclear if Saturday’s evacuation did not take place and if additional evacuations were imminent. There were no immediate important points about the condition of the evacuees.
But the fact that the evacuation took a significant position. Conditions in a vast network of tunnels beneath the Azovstal metallurgical plant, where many civilians as well as Ukrainian fighters would still be housed, would be brutal, and previous evacuation efforts had been in vain. .
The obvious ceasefire in Mariupol came as Russian attacks continued unabated in Ukraine, mainly in the fiercely contested eastern regions, but with attacks as far west as Odessa, on the Black Sea coast.
Three months into the invasion, Russia intensifies its operations in Ukraine Photo: AFP/Yasuyoshi CHIBA
Odessa regional governor Maxim Marchenko said a Russian missile strike destroyed the airport’s runway, as Russia continues to target infrastructure and lines in the west of the country.
There were no casualties from the airport strike near the historic city of one million.
Near Bucha, the city near Kiev that is synonymous with Russian war crimes allegations, Ukrainian police reported Saturday that they discovered 3 bodies from a bullet to the head with their hands tied.
The 3 bodies discovered in a well were “savagely killed” by Russian soldiers, of them shot in the head, police said in a statement.
Ukrainian troops recaptured a village near Kharkiv Photo: AFP/Dimitar DILKOFF
“The victims’ hands were tied, clothes covered their eyes and some were gagged. There are torture lines on the corpses,” he added.
Russian forces continued their relentless bombardment of the east of the country on Saturday, killing at least one user and wounding 12 others.
A destroyed railway bridge over the Siverskyi Donets River Photo: AFP/Yasuyoshi CHIBA
In Beirut, the Azov regiment said on Saturday it had cleared debris from Russia’s shelling to rescue trapped civilians.
From the heavily damaged port area of Mariupol, AFP on Friday heard heavy shelling from Azovstal, a media break organized by the Russian military, with explosions seconds apart.
“Twenty civilians, women and young people (. . . ) have been moved to a suitable location and we hope they will be evacuated to Zaporizhzhia, in controlled territory across Ukraine,” said Sviatoslav Palamar, deputy commander of the Azov Regiment.
Elderly people play chess in an empty market in Ukraine Photo: AFP/Yasuyoshi CHIBA
But Denis Pushilin, head of the separatist Donetsk region, accused Ukrainian forces of “acting like absolute terrorists” and holding civilians hostage at the metallurgical plant.
On the front line to the east, Russian troops have slowly but in some spaces complexed, with the help of a large use of artillery, however, Ukrainian forces have also retaken some territories in recent days, adding around the city of Kharkiv.
One of the Russian spaces recovered was the village of Ruska Lozova, which evacuees said had been occupied for two months.
“It’s two months of frightening fear. Nothing more, a frightening and relentless fear,” Natalia, a 28-year-old evacuee from Ruska Lozova, told AFP after arriving in Kharkiv.
Kiev citizens lost their rights in Russian movements this week Photo: AFP/Sergei SUPINSKY
“We were in the basement without food for two months, we ate what we had,” said Svyatoslav, 40, who needed to give his full name, red-eyed and tired.
Thousands of other people have been killed and more than thirteen million have been forced to flee their homes since the start of Russia’s invasion of its pro-Western neighbor on Feb. 24, according to the United Nations.
On Friday, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby drowned in emotion when he described the destruction in Ukraine and accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of “depravity. “
Ukrainian prosecutors say they are aware of more than 8,000 war crimes committed by Russian troops and are investigating 10 Russians for alleged atrocities in Bucha.
Russia has denied any involvement in the killing of civilians in Bucha.
But Russian officials showed friday that their forces carried out an airstrike in Kiev a day before a stopover at U. N. leader Antonio Guterres, the first such attack in the capital in just two weeks. A journalist was killed in the attack.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk reported that 14 Ukrainian women, a pregnant soldier, were released in the latest prisoner exchange with Russian forces.
He did say how many Russians had been returned.
Kiev admitted that Russian forces had captured one of the villages in the Donbass region.
“Even if there has been any advance by Russian troops on the ground, it is very fast,” Russian army expert Alexander Khramchikhin told AFP.
But Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that “the army’s special operation . . . it goes strictly as planned,” China’s official Xinhua news firm reported.
More Western weapons are expected to arrive in Ukraine, with US President Joe Biden billions of dollars in Congress on Thursday to increase supply.
French President Emmanuel Macron said Saturday that his country would “step up” its military and humanitarian support.
The Russian Defense Ministry has said in days that its forces have attacked Ukrainian army sites housing Western-supplied weapons and ammunition, a claim denied by a senior NATO official.
“If the United States and NATO are interested in resolving the Ukraine crisis, then, first of all, they deserve to wake up and prevent the supply of arms and ammunition to the Kiev regime,” Lavrov said.
And as Sweden weighs the possibility of joining NATO, defense officials said Saturday that a Russian reconnaissance plane violated the northern country’s airspace the day before.