Progress made on evacuations from Mariupol

ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine－More evacuations of civilians from Mariupol were reported on Monday, but hopes for more to make it out on Tuesday were dented by fresh bombings of a steel plant where fighters are holed up.

Both the Russian and Ukrainian militaries said more than 100 people were evacuated from the besieged city of Mariupol in Ukraine but differ on the exact number and other details.

According to the Russian Defense Ministry on Monday, 126 people were evacuated from the Azovstal steel plant and adjacent houses in Mariupol over the past weekend.

However, Ukraine's military police said on Monday that more than 100 people evacuated from Mariupol arrived in the Ukrainian-controlled southern city of Zaporizhzhia.

Hopes for more evacuations on Tuesday appeared to have been dealt a blow with reports that Russia has resumed shelling of the plant.

The Russian action came after Ukrainian soldiers used a cease-fire to move into firing positions at the plant, the RIA news agency quoted the Russian Defense Ministry as saying on Tuesday.

"A cease-fire was declared, civilians had to be evacuated from Azovstal territory. Azov and Ukrainian servicemen, who are stationed on the plant, took advantage of it," the ministry said.

"They came out of the basement, they took up firing positions on the territory and in the factory buildings."

Before the evacuation, which started from the weekend, about 1,000 civilians were believed to be in the plant along with an estimated 2,000 Ukrainian fighters, according to the United Nations and the Red Cross.

As many as 100,000 people overall may still be in Mariupol, which had a population of more than 400,000 before the conflict.

In another development on the humanitarian situation, Russian state-run news agency TASS reported on Monday that more than 1 million people, including nearly 200,000 children, have been taken from Ukraine to Russia in the past two months, the agency cited Russia's Defense Ministry.

Defense Ministry official Mikhail Mizintsev said they included 11,550 people, including 1,847 children, in the previous 24 hours, "without the participation of the Ukrainian authorities".

In developments on the battlefield, Russia reportedly launched a major offensive in eastern Ukraine focused on Donetsk and Lugansk.

The northeastern city of Kharkiv was under bombardment, as it has been since the early days of the military operation, the Ukrainian military said on Tuesday.

In an update, Ukraine's general staff said its forces were defending the approach to Kharkiv from Izyum, a town on the Donets River, some 120 kilometers to the southeast, as the enemy left a trail of destruction in the Lugansk region.

Missile attacks

Russian high-precision missiles hit a logistics center at a military airfield near Odessa that was used to deliver weaponry given to Kyiv by the West, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Tuesday.

According to media reports, a breakaway region of neighboring Moldova home to Russian troops, near Odessa, has seen a series of mysterious explosions in recent days, raising concerns about the conflict widening.

The fresh attacks came as the United States accused Moscow of preparing to imminently annex Lugansk and neighboring Donetsk.

"Russia plans to engineer referenda upon joining sometime in mid-May," said Michael Carpenter, the US ambassador to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.

Western nations have been trying to show support by reopening embassies in Kyiv that were closed due to the conflict, with Denmark the latest to make the move on Monday. Kristina Kvien, the US charge d'affaires, said that Washington hopes to have diplomats back in Kyiv by the end of May.

Agencies - Xinhua