The evacuation of civilians from the Azovstal steel plant had begun, reports Svyatoslav Palamar, the Ukrainian Azov Regiment deputy commander, in his video statement.
A ceasefire started at 11 a.m., Palamar says. 20 people were rescued from the rubble and evacuated so far: women, children and the elderly. He also recalled that there were many people in need of urgent medical care within the Azovstal area, and insisted that they should be a priority.
At the same time, the Russian RIA Novosti and TASS claimed that a total of 25 people had left the plant, including six children under 14 years of age. Ukraine’s parliament, however, reported that the evacuation buses accompanied by UN vehicles had only just arrived in the Azovstal area.
CNN published satellite images provided by Maxar Technologies showing the current state of the Azovstal area earlier today. The steelworks were “significantly destroyed by Russian strikes” with most of its buildings completely destroyed or having huge airstrike-created holes in their roofs.
Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky held talks with UN Secretary General António Guterres on Thursday, where he announced that he was ready to start urgent negotiations on the matter of Mariupol evacuation — with the help of the UN. António Guterres said that he was concerned about the situation in Mariupol and labelled it "a crisis within a crisis.” “Thousands of civilians are in life-and-death need of assistance. <…> They need to be saved from the apocalypse,” he said.
Mariupol is a huge city in the south of the Donetsk region on the coast of the Sea of Azov. The city was surrounded in the early days of the war and remained under siege for more than six weeks. It is challenging to calculate how many civilians were killed in the siege. Vadym Boychenko, the city’s mayor, claims that at least 10,000 residents lost their lives.
Sergei Shoigu, Russia’s Defence Minister, reported to Vladimir Putin that the Russian army captured Mariupol on 21 April. Putin, in his turn, commanded to cancel the offensive of the Azovstal steel plant deeming it ‘impractical’. Nonetheless, there is still some minor combat within the city limits, according to the Ukrainian media,
