Some 20,000 people evacuated from Mariupol

Hope is reborn in Mariupol. Some 20,000 people were able to leave the major port city in southeastern Ukraine besieged by Russian forces on Tuesday, via a humanitarian corridor.

“Today, about 20,000 people left Mariupol” in 4,000 cars, confirmed in a press release the deputy head of the Ukrainian presidential administration, Kyrylo Tymoshenko. In total, about 29,000 people were evacuated from several besieged cities across the country on Tuesday alone, according to the same source.

A population holed up in cellars

By early afternoon, the municipality of Mariupol had reported that 2,000 vehicles had left the city and that 2,000 others were waiting to do the same. On Monday, 160 vehicles had already left the port city where conditions are catastrophic after days of bombing and siege by Russian forces and their pro-Russian separatist allies, which force residents to live holed up in cellars. The humanitarian corridor used by these columns of vehicles connects Mariupol to Zaporozhye in the northwest, via Berdiansk, approximately 270 km of road.

After a series of failures, for lack of a ceasefire, the evacuations have therefore finally accelerated in Mariupol, while in the city, the inhabitants lack water and food. The Russian bombing of a maternity ward last week also sparked international outcry. The region’s governor, Pavlo Kyrylenko, however claimed on Tuesday that Russian forces were holding workers at a Mariupol hospital and 400 nearby residents “hostage” inside the facility, charges that could not be denied. independently verified.

A particularly strategic city

Located about 55 kilometers from the Russian border and 85 kilometers from the separatist stronghold of Donetsk, Mariupol is the largest city still in the hands of kyiv in the Donbass basin which includes the regions of Donetsk and Lugansk. The capture by Moscow of this port city, populated before the war by 450,000 inhabitants and located on the shores of the Sea of ​​Azov, would be an important turning point in the invasion of Ukraine. It would make it possible to make the connection between the Russian forces coming from annexed Crimea, which have already taken the ports of Berdiansk and Kherson, and the separatist and Russian troops in the Donbass.