Russia Ukraine war top developments: Civilians evacuated from Ukraines Mariupol Pelosi pledges continued support to Ukraine

Around 50 Ukrainian civilians reached the relative safety of a temporary camp in Russian-held territory on Sunday after being evacuated from a ruined steelworks in Mariupol, where the United Nations said a “safe passage operation” was in progress. Russia declared victory over Mariupol on April 21 even as hundreds of holdout Ukrainian troops and civilians took shelter in the city’s Azovstal steel works, a vast Soviet-era complex with a network of bunkers and tunnels, where they have been trapped with little food, water or medicine.

Negotiations to evacuate the civilians had repeatedly broken down in recent weeks, with Russia and Ukraine blaming each other. But on Sunday, more than 50 civilians arrived at a temporary accommodation centre after escaping from Mariupol, a Reuters photographer said.

With fighting stretching along a broad front in southern and eastern Ukraine, US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi pledged continued U.S. support for Ukraine when she met President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in an unannounced visit to Kyiv.

Pelosi, second in line to the presidency after the vice president, is the highest-ranking American leader to visit Ukraine since the start of the war on February 24, and her visit marks a major show of continuing support for the country’s struggle against Russia. “Our delegation travelled to Kyiv to send an unmistakable and resounding message to the entire world: America stands firmly with Ukraine,” Pelosi said in a statement released Sunday.

Here are some key updates:

Pope Francis on Sunday described the war in Ukraine a ‘macabre regression of humanity’ that makes him ‘suffer and cry’, calling for humanitarian corridors to evacuate people trapped in the Mariupol steelworks, news agency Reuters reported. Speaking to thousands of people in St. Peter’s Square for his noon blessing, Francis again implicitly criticised Russia, saying that Mariupol had been ‘barbarously bombarded and destroyed’.

Some women and children were evacuated from a steel plant that is the last defensive stronghold in the bombed-out ruins of the port city of Mariupol, a Ukrainian official and Russian state news organisations said, but hundreds are believed to remain trapped with little food or water.

Russia’s defence ministry said shelling by Ukraine’s forces of villages in the Kherson region has killed and injured civilians, the Russian news agency reported. The ministry said Ukrainian forces shelled a school, a kindergarten and a cemetery in the villages of Kyselivka and Shyroka Balka. It gave no information on how many people were killed or injured, or when the shelling took place.

An evacuation of civilians from Ukraine’s mostly Russian-controlled southeastern port city of Mariupol could be possible on Sunday, local officials said. Mariupol’s city council and the local governor told residents who wished to leave for the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia to gather at an evacuation point in Mariupol at 4 p.m. local time (1300 GMT).

Russia’s defence ministry said it had struck at weapons supplied to Ukraine by the United States and European countries and destroyed a runway at a military airfield near the Ukrainian city of Odesa. The ministry said it used high-precision Onyx missiles to strike the airfield, after Ukraine accused Russia of knocking out a newly constructed runway at the main airport of Odesa. Odesa regional governor Maksym Marchenko said Russia had used a Bastion missile, launched from Crimea. Russia’s defence ministry also said its air defence systems had shot down two Ukrainian Su-24m bombers over the Kharkiv region overnight.

Satellite photos analysed by news show damage to oil depots just across the Ukrainian border in Russia after suspected Ukrainian attacks. The photos from Saturday show damage at two sites in Bryansk. The blasts damaged multiple tanks, leaving the surrounding grounds charred. The explosions happened Monday. One hit an oil depot owned by Transneft-Druzhba, a subsidiary of the Russian state-controlled company Transneft that operates the western-bound Druzhba (Friendship) pipeline carrying crude oil to Europe. The second facility is a short distance from the other.

The United Nations has been working to broker an evacuation of the up to 1,000 civilians living beneath the sprawling Soviet-era Azovstal plant in Mariupol after numerous previous attempts failed. Ukraine has not said how many fighters are also in the plant, the only part of Mariupol not occupied by Russian forces, but Russia put the number at about 2,000. An estimated 100,000 civilians remain in the city.

Hollywood actress and UN humanitarian Angelina Jolie made a surprise visit to the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, the Lviv regional governor said on Telegram. According to Maksym Kozytskyy, Jolie – who has been a UNHCR Special Envoy for Refugees since 2011 – had come to speak with displaced people who have found refuge in Lviv, including children undergoing treatment for injuries sustained in the missile strike on the Kramatorsk railway station in early April. “She was very moved by (the children’s) stories,” Kozytskyy wrote. “One girl was even able to privately tell Ms. Jolie about a dream she’d had.” He said Jolie also visited a boarding school, talk with students and took photos with them, adding “she promised she would come again”.