More than 160 private cars have left the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol, local authorities have said, in what would be the first successful evacuation since the city was encircled by Russian troops more than two weeks ago.


“It is known that as of 13:00 [11:00 GMT] more than 160 private cars managed to leave from Mariupol,” the city council said Monday on its official Telegram channel, adding that the convoy has already passed the town of Berdyansk and was on the move towards Zaporizhzhia.

The city has been subject to relentless bombardment since Russian troops surrounded it on March 2. Since then, the roughly 400,000 people who remain in Mariupol have been left with dwindling access to water, food and medicine. Heat, phone services – and electricity in many areas – have been cut.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) warned on Sunday that residents of the city faced the “worst-case scenario” unless Moscow and Kyiv agreed to allow access to humanitarian aid.


Previous attempts to establish evacuation corridors to allow civilians to escape the city, and to allow humanitarian aid to enter, have fallen apart as earlier ceasefires collapsed.
The two parties have traded the blame for such failures, with Ukrainian authorities accusing Russia of deliberately opening fire on aid convoys heading towards Mariupol. Russia has blamed Kyiv for sabotaging ceasefire agreements and holding civilians hostages.

On Monday, Mikhail Mizintsev of the Russian Ministry of Defence said that 450 tonnes of medicines, food and essential supplies have been brought to the city after Russia “eliminated the neo-Nazis’ main forces entrenched in the city’s perimeter residential areas,” he said, according to state media news agency TASS.

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