Ukraine announced on Wednesday that an agreement has been reached to open a humanitarian evacuation corridor from the besieged Mariupol, which will try to remove some 6,000 civilians, mainly women, children and the elderly, from the city in the south of the country.
“Given the catastrophic humanitarian situation, we are going to focus our efforts on evacuating these people,” he said, through TelegranDeputy Prime Minister of Ukraine Iryna Vereshchuk, reports the Ukrinform portal.
In the last three days, no humanitarian corridor had been opened, neither in that city nor in other parts of the east of the country, due to the lack of security guarantees, according to Vereshchuk.
According to sources from the mayor’s office, it is expected to transport some 6,000 people, for which it is hoped that 90 buses will arrive throughout this Wednesday.
The mayor of Mariúpol, Vadym Boishenko, who is already outside the town, estimates that some 100,000 civilians remain in the beleaguered port city, which before the start of the invasion had half a million inhabitants.
Russia today gave another ultimatum to the Ukrainian forces resisting at the Azovstal metallurgical plant in Mariupol to lay down their arms on Wednesday, after other previously given deadlines expired on Tuesday without such a surrender.
In that steel plant are the last resistance among the Ukrainian troops, in an undetermined number but estimated at between 2,000 and 2,500. Thousands of civilians have also taken refuge there, according to Ukrainian sources.
An officer from the 36th Brigade of the Marine Corps, which continues to defend the city, sent a dramatic message on Facebook asking for international support.
“The enemy is ten times bigger than us,” wrote Sergei Wolyna, an officer of that brigade, according to whom Mariupol has “days, if not hours” left until it falls into the hands of Russian troops.
