People fleeing besieged Mariupol described weeks of bombardment and deprivation as they arrived Monday in Ukrainian-held territory, where officials and relief workers anxiously awaited the first group of civilians evacuated from the steel plant that is the last stronghold of Ukrainian fighters in the devastated port city.
Video posted online Sunday by Ukrainian forces showed elderly women and mothers with small children climbing over a steep pile of rubble from the sprawling Azovstal steel mill and boarding a bus.
More than 100 civilians from the bombed-out plant were expected to arrive in Zaporizhzhia, about 140 miles (230 kilometers) northwest of Mariupol, on Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.
“Today, for the first time in all the days of the war, this vitally needed green corridor has started working,” he said Sunday in a video message.
However, at least some of the people evacuated from the plant on Sunday were apparently taken to a village controlled by Moscow-backed separatists. The Russian military said that some chose to stay in separatist areas, while dozens left for Ukrainian-held territory. The information could not be independently verified.
In the past, Ukraine has accused Moscow’s troops of taking civilians against their will to Russia. Moscow has said the people wanted to go to Russia.
The steel-plant evacuation, if successful, would represent rare progress in easing the human cost of the almost 10-week war, which has caused particular suffering in Mariupol.
Previous attempts to open safe corridors out of the Sea of Azov city and other places have broken down, with Ukrainian officials repeatedly accusing Russian forces of shooting and shelling along agreed-upon evacuation routes.
Before the weekend evacuation overseen by the United Nations and the Red Cross, about 1,000 civilians were believed to be in the steel plant, along with an estimated 2,000 Ukrainian fighters.
As many as 100,000 people overall may still be in Mariupol, which had a pre-war population of more than 400,000.
In other developments, European Union energy ministers met Monday to discuss new sanctions against the Kremlin, which could include restrictions on Russian oil — though Russia-dependent members of the 27-nation bloc, including Hungary and Slovakia, are wary of taking tough action.
Zelenskyy said he hoped more people would be able to leave Mariupol in an organized evacuation on Monday. The city council told residents wanting to leave to gather at a shopping mall to wait for buses.
As in the past when official evacuations faltered, some people managed to escape from Mariupol on their own, while others remained trapped.
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