Zelensky added in a speech via video that the authorities are now focusing on evacuating the injured and paramedics, in addition to working on opening humanitarian corridors for all residents of Mariupol and the surrounding towns.
Earlier Saturday, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, Irina Vereshchuk, said all civilians, women, children and the elderly, had been evacuated from the Azovstal complex in the southern port city of Mariupol, despite the Ukrainian military’s announcement of the continuation of the Russian attack on the factory.
“This part of the humanitarian operation in Mariupol is over,” Vereshchuk added on Telegram. For its part, the Russian Defense Ministry announced, on Saturday, the completion of the process of evacuating civilians from the Azovstal complex.
The Soviet-era steel mill, the last stronghold of Ukrainian forces in Mariupol, has become a symbol of resistance to Russia’s broader attempts to seize swathes of eastern and southern Ukraine in the 10-week-old offensive.
Under intense bombardment, fighters and civilians were trapped for weeks in bunkers and deep tunnels underground, without enough food, water and medicine.
The Ukrainian army command said that Russian forces, supported by tanks and artillery, tried again on Saturday to storm Azovstal as part of a fierce attack to expel the last Ukrainian defenders from the strategic coastal city on the Sea of Azov.
The city of Mariupol was destroyed as a result of the Russian bombing that has been going on for weeks, and most of the steel factory area was destroyed.
Several groups of civilians have left the sprawling compound over the past week during pauses in fighting.
The evacuations mediated by the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross began early last week. But it stopped during the week due to renewed fighting.
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