The Mariupol city council claimed early Saturday that 10 empty buses were headed to Berdyansk. Berdyansk is 84 kilometers (52.2 miles) west of Mariupol.
The buses will pick up some of the evacuees who made it out of the embattled city in buses or their own vehicles. It is estimated that about 2,750 people left the bombed-out city in the last few days.
Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, Iryna Vereshchuk, claims that 765 Mariupol residents arrived in Zaporizhzhia, on Saturday. Zaporizhzhia is 141 miles north of and is being used as an evacuation point.
About 500 refugees from throughout eastern Ukraine, including 99 children and 12 people with disabilities, arrived in the Russian city of Kazan. They came in an overnight train.
One of the refugees from Mariupol Artur Kirillov said that he doubted he would ever go home again. “That’s unlikely, there is no city anymore.”
With the evacuation of at least 4 million refugees the humanitarian crisis continues.
Military analysts believe that Putin is determined to capture the region after his forces failed to secure the capital city of Kyiv.
