The French president is expected to hold talks with Vladimir Putin to persuade the Kremlin to allow the evacuation. The news came as Vadym Boychenko, the mayor of Mariupol, said on Saturday that Russian troops had abducted at least 15,000 people and forcibly relocated them to Kremlin-controlled territory. Satellite imagery showed the creation of a camp in the seaside village of Bezemen, in the autonomous-controlled area of Donetsk, just 11 miles from Mariupol. “The occupiers are forcing people who are already exhausted by the war to get on buses,” Boychenko said in a statement posted on the Telegram messaging app. He added: “There is also information that the Russian occupiers are confiscating passports and other Ukrainian identity documents. “The deportees are first transported to so-called filter camps, from where they are redistributed to various remote cities in Russia.”
