Ukraine's deputy prime minister says all women, children and older adults have been evacuated from a Mariupol steel mill long besieged by Russian forces.
"The president's order has been carried out: All women, children and the elderly have been evacuated from Azovstal," Iryna Veheshchuk said."This part of the Mariupol humanitarian operation has been completed."
As Russia's Monday holiday commemorating Nazi Germany's defeat in World War II approached, cities across Ukraine prepared for an expected increase in Russian attacks. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged residents numbed by more than 10 weeks of war to heed air raid warnings. Moscow's also has sought to sweep across southern Ukraine to both cut off the country from the sea and to connect its territory to the breakaway Transnistria region of Moldova, long home to Russian troops. But it has struggled to achieve those objectives.
Against that backdrop, Ukrainian fighters made a final stand to prevent a complete takeover of Mariupol. Securing the strategically important Sea of Azov port would give Moscow a land bridge to the Crimea Peninsula, which Russia annexed from Ukraine during a 2014 invasion. The latest evacuees followed roughly 500 others who were allowed to leave the plant and other parts of the city in recent days.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said"influential states" were involved in efforts to rescue the soldiers, although he did not mention any by name. A Washington-based think tank, the Institute for the Study of War, said in its most recent assessment that Ukraine's military may be able to push Russian forces"out of artillery range of Kharkiv in the coming days," providing a respite for the city and an opportunity to build the defenders' momentum"into a successful, broader counteroffensive."
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