Michael Carpenter, the US ambassador to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, said on Monday that the United States believed the Kremlin would also recognize the southern city of Hersonissos as an independent democracy. No move will be recognized by the United States or its allies, he said. Russia plans to hold fraudulent referendums in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions that will “try to add an investment of democratic or electoral legitimacy” and link entities to Russia, Carpenter said. He also said there were indications that Russia was planning an independence vote in Kherson. Mayors and local lawmakers have been abducted there, internet and mobile services have been shut down and a Russian school curriculum will be imposed soon, Carpenter said. The Ukrainian government says Russia has introduced its ruble as its currency. More than 100 people – including elderly women and mothers with young children – left the dilapidated Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol on Sunday and boarded buses and ambulances for the Ukrainian-controlled city of Zaporizhzhia, about 140 miles (230 kilometers) north. Mariupol Deputy Mayor Sergei Orloff told the BBC that the evacuees were making slow progress. Authorities did not provide any explanation for the delay. At least some of the civilians were apparently relocated to a Russian-backed separatist village. The Russian military said some had chosen to remain in separatist areas, with dozens fleeing to Ukrainian-occupied territories. In the past, Ukraine has accused Moscow troops of transporting civilians against their will to Russia or to Russian-controlled areas. The Kremlin denied it. The Russian bombardment of the extensive factory by air, tank and ship continued after the partial evacuation, said the Azov Battalion of Ukraine, which assists in the defense of the mill, in the application of Telegram messaging. Orloff said high-level talks were under way between Ukraine, Russia and international organizations to remove more people. The evacuation of the steel plant, if successful, would be a rare advance in reducing the human cost of the nearly 10-week war, which has caused particular pain in Mariupol. Earlier attempts to open safe corridors outside the southern port city and elsewhere have collapsed, with Ukrainian officials blaming Russian forces for shootings and bombings along the agreed evacuation routes. Prior to the evacuation at the weekend, under the auspices of the United Nations and the Red Cross, about 1,000 civilians were believed to be at the plant, along with about 2,000 Ukrainian defenders who refused to surrender. Up to 100,000 people in total may still be in Mariupol, which had a population of over 400,000 before the war. Russian forces have hit much of the city in ruins, trapping civilians with little food, water, heat or medicine. Some residents of Mariupol left on their own, often with damaged private cars. As sunset approached, Yaroslav Dmytryshyn, a resident of Mariupol, jumped into a reception center in Zaporizhzhia with a car with a rear seat full of young people and two signs stuck in the rear window: “Children” and “Little ones”. “I can not believe we survived,” he said, worn out but in good spirits after two days on the road. “There is no Mariupol at all,” he said. “Someone has to rebuild it and it will take millions of tons of gold.” He said they lived right across the railroad from the steel plant. “It was destroyed,” he said. “The factory is completely lost.” Anastasiia Dembytska, who took advantage of the ceasefire to leave with her daughter, nephew and dog, said she could see the steelwork through her window when she dared to look. “We saw the rockets flying,” and smoke clouds over the factory, he said. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told Greek state television that civilians remaining at the steel plant were afraid to board buses, fearing they would be transported to Russia. He said the United Nations had assured him that they could go to areas controlled by his government. Mariupol is located in Donbas, the eastern industrial heart of Ukraine, and is the key to Russia’s campaign in the east. Its capture will deprive Ukraine of a vital port, allow Russia to build a land corridor to the Crimean peninsula, which it occupied from Ukraine in 2014, and free troops to fight elsewhere. More than 1 million people, including nearly 200,000 children, have been evacuated from Ukraine to Russia, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Monday, according to the state-run TASS news agency. Defense Ministry official Mikhail Mizinchev said that number included 11,550 people, including 1,847 children, in the past 24 hours, “without the involvement of the Ukrainian authorities.” These civilians were “evacuated to the territory of the Russian Federation from the dangerous areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics” and other parts of Ukraine, according to the report. No details were given. Zelensky said on Monday that at least 220 Ukrainian children had been killed by the Russian army since the start of the war and that 1,570 educational institutions had been destroyed or destroyed. Failing to seize Kyiv, the capital, Russian President Vladimir Putin has shifted his focus to Donbass, where Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian forces since 2014. Russia says it has hit dozens of military targets in the area, including assemblies and weapons depots, and an ammunition depot near Chervone in the Zaporizhzhia region, west of Donbas. Ukrainian and Western officials say Moscow troops are firing indiscriminately, killing many civilians while making slow progress. The governor of the Odessa region along the Black Sea coast, Maksym Marchenko, told the Telegram that a Russian rocket attack on Monday had caused deaths and injuries. He did not give details. Zelensky said the attack destroyed a dormitory and killed a 14-year-old boy. Ukraine said Russia had also struck a strategic road and rail bridge west of Odessa. The bridge was badly damaged by previous Russian strikes and its destruction would cut off a supply route for weapons and other cargo from neighboring Romania. However, a satellite image taken by Planet Labs PBC and analyzed by the Associated Press showed that the bridge has been standing since Monday afternoon. Another photo, taken Monday, shows nearly 50 Russian military helicopters at Stary Oskol, a Russian base near the Ukrainian border and about 175 kilometers (110 miles) northeast of the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv. The helicopters were stationed on the asphalt, the runway and the grass of the otherwise civilian airport, with military equipment nearby. During the war in Ukraine, Russia flew military attack helicopters low to the ground to try to dodge anti-aircraft missiles.
Varenytsia reported from Kyiv, Ukraine. Associated Press reporters Yesica Fisch in Sloviansk, Jon Gambrell and Yuras Karmanau in Lviv, Mstyslav Chernov in Kharkiv, Lolita Baldor in Washington and AP staff around the world contributed to this report.
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