Twenty-five people were evacuated from the Azov steel plant in Mariupol, according to Russian media reports on Saturday, and 19 adults and six children were evacuated, according to RIA Novostyi and TASZSZ news agencies. The Azov regiment, which defended the presence, asserted that twenty civilians – women and children – had been evacuated from Azovstal.
According to Ukrainian sources, about a thousand civilians fled to steel factory shelters and were stranded there. On the other hand, Russia claims that about 2,500 Ukrainian armed and foreign mercenaries are present at the facility.
Moscow and Kiev, brokered by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, agreed this week to establish a humanitarian corridor to evacuate civilians, but no major evacuations have taken place since then.
More than nine weeks after the start of the Russian invasion, the situation for the people trapped in Azovtola is believed to be catastrophic.
The General Staff of the Ukrainian Army said that Russian forces continued their mine attack on the Donetsk Basin on Saturday, but were unable to occupy the three target areas, Lyman in Donetsk Oblast, Severodonetsk and Bubasna in Luhansk Oblast.
According to a statement issued by the Russian Internet Ministry, Russian forces bombed 17 Ukrainian military facilities with high-precision missiles on Saturday, destroying a command center and a missile and artillery storage depot.
More than two hundred Ukrainian soldiers were killed and 23 armored vehicles were incapacitated during the air raids. The report did not mention a missile attack on Odessa airport.
Russian plane crashes at Odessa airport in the Black Sea port city
On Saturday, the Ukrainian military declared the runway unusable. No physical injuries occurred.
A 25-year-old Danish man allegedly died on April 26 in the town of Mykolaiv in southern Ukraine. Danish television reported that the man was a soldier in an international corps fighting the Russians. According to local media reports, the Danish Foreign Ministry was unable to confirm the news on television and contacted the Ukrainian authorities.
The Danish daily Jylland-Posten, citing the Ukrainian embassy in Denmark, wrote that up to a hundred Danes could travel to Ukraine to fight Russia.
According to the governor of western Russia’s Kursk region, several mines crashed at a checkpoint near the border with Ukraine on Saturday. Roman Starovogt said in a video posted on the Telegram messaging app that there were no injuries or damage. The British news agency, Reuters, was unable to confirm the news from an independent source.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in an interview on Saturday that lifting Western sanctions on Russia is part of the peace talks.
(In the opening image: People holding banners will demonstrate in Kyiv on April 30, 2022. Protesters are asking world leaders to help create humanitarian corridors and evacuate civilians and soldiers stranded in Mariupol).
Opening photo: MTI / EPA / Serhiy Dolzhenko
