Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned that the outgoing Russian troops were creating a “catastrophic” situation for civilians by leaving mines around houses, abandoned equipment and “even the corpses of the dead.” His allegations could not be independently verified. Associated Press reporters in Bucha, a suburb northwest of Kiev, watched Ukrainian soldiers backed by a column of tanks and other armored vehicles use cables to pull corpses from a road from a distance. Locals said the dead – the AP counted at least six – were civilians killed without provocation by departing Russian troops. “These people were just walking around and shooting them for no reason. “Bang,” said a Bucha resident, who declined to be named for security reasons. “In the next neighborhood, Stekolka, it was even worse. “They would shoot without asking any questions.” Ukraine and its Western allies have reported growing indications that Russia is withdrawing its forces from Kyiv and building the strength of its troops in eastern Ukraine. The visible shift did not mean that the country was facing a postponement after more than five weeks of war or that more than 4 million refugees who had fled Ukraine would return soon. Zelensky said he expects the abandoned cities to endure rocket and rocket fire from afar and the fighting in the east to be intense. In a video overnight speech Saturday, the Ukrainian leader said the country’s troops would not allow the Russians to retreat without a fight: “They are being bombed. “They are destroying whoever they can.” Russia, Zelensky said, has enough power to put more pressure on eastern and southern Ukraine. “What is the goal of the Russian troops?” “They want to occupy Donbass and southern Ukraine.” “What is our goal?” “To defend ourselves, our freedom, our land and our people.” Moscow’s focus on eastern Ukraine also targeted the besieged southeastern city of Mariupol. The port city in the Sea of Azov is located in the predominantly Russian-speaking Donbass region, where Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian troops for eight years. Military analysts say Russian President Vladimir Putin is determined to seize the region after his forces failed to secure Kyiv and other major cities. The International Committee of the Red Cross had hoped to evacuate Mariupol residents on Saturday, but had not yet arrived in the city. A day earlier, local authorities said the Red Cross had been blocked by Russian forces. Zelenskyy’s adviser, Oleksiy Arestovych, said in an interview with Russian lawyer and activist Mark Feygin that Russia and Ukraine had reached an agreement to allow 45 buses to go to Mariupol to evacuate residents “in the coming days”. The Mariupol city council said earlier on Saturday that 10 empty buses were heading to Berdyansk, a town 84 kilometers (52.2 miles) west of Mariupol, to pick up people who managed to get there on their own. About 2,000 people left Mariupol on Friday, some by bus and others in their own vehicles, city officials said. Meanwhile, Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine Iryna Vereshchuk said that 765 residents of Mariupol on Saturday used private vehicles to reach Zaporizhzhia, a city still under Ukrainian control that has served as a destination for other planned expeditions. Among those who escaped was Tamila Mazurenko, who said she left Mariupol on Monday, arrived in Berdyansk that night and then took a bus to Zaporizhia. Mazurenko said she waited for a bus until Friday, spending one night sleeping in a field. “I have only one question: Why?” she said about the test of her city. “We lived only as normal people. And our normal life was ruined. And we lost everything. “I do not have a job, I can not find my son.” Mariupol was besieged by Russian forces for more than a month and suffered some of the worst attacks of the war, including a maternity hospital and a civilian theater. About 100,000 people are believed to remain in the city, out of a pre-war population of 430,000, facing severe shortages of water, food, fuel and medicine. Zelensky said a significant number of Russian troops were stationed in Mariupol, giving Ukraine “invaluable time; allowing us to thwart the enemy’s tactics and weaken its capabilities.” Occupying the city would give Moscow an unbreakable land bridge from Russia to Crimea, which it occupied from Ukraine in 2014. But its resistance also has symbolic significance during the Russian invasion, said Volodymyr Fesenko, its leader. Ukrainian Penta think tank. “Mariupol has become a symbol of the Ukrainian resistance and without its conquest, Putin can not sit at the negotiating table,” Fesenko said. About 500 refugees from eastern Ukraine, including 99 children and 12 people with disabilities, arrived in the Russian city of Kazan by train overnight. Asked if he saw the opportunity to return home, Mariupol resident Artur Kirillov replied: “This is unlikely, there is no city anymore.” In cities and towns around Kyiv, signs of fierce fighting were everywhere after the Russian rearrangement. Damaged armored vehicles from both armies were found on roads and fields along with scattered military equipment. Ukrainian troops were at the entrance to Antonov Airport in the suburb of Hostomel, demonstrating control of the runway that Russia tried to invade in the early days of the war. Inside the complex, the Mriya, one of the largest aircraft ever built, was damaged under a hangar with holes from the February attack. “The Russians could not build one and so they destroyed it,” said Oleksandr Merkushev, the mayor of Kiev’s Irpin district. Irpin has seen some of the toughest fighting, and Merkushev said Russian troops “left behind many corpses, many destroyed buildings and mined many places.” A prominent Ukrainian photojournalist who went missing last month in a battle zone near the capital was found dead Friday in the village of Huta Mezihirska north of Kiev, the country’s attorney general’s office said. The attorney general’s office attributed Max Levin’s death to two shots fired by the Russian military and said an investigation was under way. Elsewhere, at least three Russian ballistic missiles were fired late Friday in the Black Sea region of Odessa, said regional leader Maksim Marchenko. The Ukrainian military says the Iskander missiles did not hit critical infrastructure targeting Odessa, Ukraine’s largest port and naval base. Ukraine’s state nuclear service said a series of bombings on Saturday injured four people in Enerhodar, a city in the southeast that has been under Russian control since early March along with the nearby Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman told the Telegram that the four were badly burned when Russian troops fired light and sound grenades and mortars at a pro-Ukrainian demonstration. The head of the Ukrainian delegation to the talks with Russia said that the Moscow negotiators had informally agreed to most of the draft proposal discussed during face-to-face talks in Istanbul this week, but no written confirmation had been given. However, David Arahamia told Ukrainian television that he hoped the draft had been developed enough for the two countries’ presidents to meet to discuss it.
Karmanau reported from Lviv, Ukraine. Andrea Rosa in Irpin, Ukraine, and Associated Press reporters around the world contributed to this report.
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