By Tom Balmforth
KYIV (Reuters) – Humanitarian organisations worked to evacuate more civilians from the devastated Ukrainian port city of Mariupol on Monday but hundreds of people remained trapped in the Azovstal steel works, the last stronghold of resistance to the Russian siege.
A first group of evacuees was due to arrive in a Ukrainian-held town northwest of Mariupol on Monday morning. But Russian forces had resumed shelling the steel works on Sunday as soon as the buses had left the plant, a city official said on Monday.
“Yesterday, as soon as the buses left Azovstal with the evacuees, new shelling began immediately,” Petro Andryushchenko told Ukrainian television.
People still stuck there were running out of water, food and medicine as Russian forces hemmed them into the industrial complex, whose network of bunkers and tunnels has provided shelter from weeks of Russian bombardment.
“The situation has become a sign of a real humanitarian catastrophe,” Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said.
On the international front, energy ministers from EU countries were due to hold emergency talks to plan a response to Moscow’s demand that European buyers pay for Russian gas in roubles or face their supply being cut off.
While the EU has imposed heavy economic sanctions on Russia in response to its invasion of Ukraine, the issue of Russian energy supplies has posed a dilemma that threatens to crack the united front.
LOOKING EAST
The Russian military is now focusing on crushing resistance in Ukraine’s south and east after failing to capture Kyiv in the early weeks of the war, now in its third month.
Its assaults have flattened cities, killed thousands of civilians and forced more than 5 million people to flee the country. Mariupol, on the Sea of Azov, has become emblematic of the brutality of the war and the suffering of ordinary people.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s forces are now in control of nearly all the city, linking up Russian-held territory to the west…
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