A convoy of buses transporting Ukrainian civilians trapped for more than two months was able to leave Mariupol on Monday May 2, Petro Andriouchchenko, an aide to the mayor, announced on Ukrainian television. While multiple attempts to establish ceasefires and humanitarian corridors, discussed with the mediation of the International Committee of the Red Cross, had failed in recent weeks, evacuations took place in Mariupol for the third day consecutive.
→ STORY. Mariupol, story of a battle that has become a symbol
In consultation with the UN, the Red Cross took charge of the convoy which traveled 230 kilometers from Mariupol to Zaporijjia, on the banks of the Dnieper.
The ceasefire declared on April 30, at 11 a.m., had already made it possible to evacuate some twenty civilians who had taken refuge in the Azovstal steelworks complex, the last bastion of the Ukrainian forces in this port now mainly under the control of the Russian army. The next day, the Ukrainian president confirmed the evacuation of a hundred civilians from the Azovstal factory, who had arrived in Zaporijjia on Monday morning.
“For the first time since the beginning of the war, this much-needed green corridor has started to operate”, could then declare Volodymyr Zelensky. On Monday, civilians surviving outside the steel complex were evacuated.
A devastated city
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced to Russian President Vladimir Putin, on April 21, the “liberation” of Mariupol as part of what Moscow continues to describe as a“special military operation” aiming to “demilitarize” et “Denazifier” Ukraine. But control of the labyrinth of corridors, tunnels, furnaces and underground passages of the Azovstal steelworks continues to elude the Russian army after the retreat into the complex of around a thousand Ukrainian soldiers. Sviatoslav Palamar, deputy commander of an Azov regiment currently stuck in the steelworks, had unsuccessfully called for the intervention of a third country to allow Ukrainian soldiers to leave the city “with our weapons”.
Negotiations for the evacuation of civilians from Mariupol have also stalled for several weeks, with Moscow and kyiv accusing each other of having derailed ceasefires, while nearly 100,000 Ukrainian civilians are still stranded in this city devastated by two months of fighting. Several hundred civilians are still entrenched in the Azovstal steelworks.
Further north, Russian troops continue to nibbling ground in the Donbass salient. There are reports of heavy fighting near Izium and Lyman, the two main axes of advance of the Russian army at the northern pincer.