During the first two days of the evacuation from AzovStal, the last Ukrainian stronghold in Russian-occupied Mariupol, the UN and the ICRC has helped the Ukrainian government to rescue more than 100 women, children, and elderly from the factory.
However, yesterday night, Russia resumed shelling of the plant, despite an agreed upon ceasefire. Ukraine aims to continue the evacuation today.
There are still some 2,000 Ukrainian soldiers in AzovStal, with approximately 600 wounded. The Ukrainian defenders have expressed hope that they would also be evacuated, following the evacuations of all civilians from the plant.
“The humanitarian operation in Mariupol will continue until we save all our citizens,” Ukraine’s reintegration minister Iryna Vereshchuk said in a statement.
A long curfew has been imposed in Odesa. It started at 2200 on May 1 and will last until 0500 on May 3. People are not allowed out unless they are going to shelters. The authorities imposed this curfew to circumvent pro-Russian provocations that may occur today, May 2, the anniversary of the Odesa Trade Unions House tragedy.
In 2014, some 48 people died and more than 200 were wounded after the clashes between pro-Russian and pro-Ukrainian activists that ended up with a fire in at the Trade Unions House building, which had been serving as a camp for the pro-Russian supporters. Ukrainian law enforcement has investigated the matter for the past eight years, but have yet to release any results. Russian media and government sources, however, have already claimed that was Ukrainian nationalists who were responsible for the blaze.
Early in the morning on May 2, Russians shelled Dnipropetrovsk Oblast several times. At about 0802 today, Russian troops launched a missile strike on the Synelnykivskyi district of the Dnipropetrovsk oblast destroying a grain warehouse, said Valentyn Reznichenko, head of the regional military administration.
“We have an ‘arrival’ again in the Synelnykiv district,” Reznichenko wrote in a Telegram post on Monday morning.
“The rocket hit the [grain] elevator. Destroyed the warehouse with grain. No one has been injured.”
Russia already shelled farms and grain warehouses in the same district on May 1.
And it has also stolen multiple tons of Ukrainian grains in Zaporizhzhya Oblast.
Russian invaders continue to attack Ukraine on all fronts. The Russian offense continues in Kharkiv Oblast near Izyum. Yesterday, Ukrainian media outlets reported that Russian Chief Commander Gerasimov has been wounded, overseeing operations in the Izyum front. But the NYT said Gerasimov managed to leave Izyum before the Ukrainians attacked and destroyed the command center there.
