According to Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk, seven evacuation corridors along major routes are expected to be opened in Ukraine on Saturday.
Vereshchuk, who announced the corridors in a Facebook post on Saturday, said the list includes the route from the besieged southern city of Mariupol to the government-run city of Zaporizhzhya in southeastern Ukraine.
Private transport will travel along the evacuation route, stopping in Mangush, Berdiansk, Tokmak, Vasylivka and Kamyanske, before reaching the final destination of Zaporizhzhia.
Vereshchuk announced in a video message Friday night that a convoy of 42 buses from the southern city of Berdiansk – with residents from the besieged city of Mariupol – had managed to pass a key Russian checkpoint and was on its way to Zaporizhzhya. That convoy arrived in Zaporizhzhya later that night.
Vereshchuk praised the arrival as a success, following efforts by the Ukrainian government to try “to open the corridors from Mariupol to Zaporizhzhya” since March 5.
A total of 6,266 people were evacuated from Ukrainian cities on Friday, including 1,431 people who moved to Zaporizhzhya by their own vehicles from the southern cities of Berdiansk and Melitopol via evacuation corridors, Vereshcuk said. She added that of that number, 771 were originally from Mariupol.
A route for buses and private vehicles from Berdiansk to Zaporizhzia is also expected to operate on Saturday, with stops in Tokmak, Vasylivka and Kamyanske.
Evacuation routes will also be opened from the town of Rubizhne in the separatist-controlled region of Luhansk to Bakhmut in the eastern region of Donetsk, which is also controlled by Russian-backed separatists.
The remaining routes go from Nizhny to Bakhmut, Severodonetsk to Bakhmut, Popasna to Bakhmut and Lysychansk to Bakhmut.
DailyExpertNews’s Nathan Hodge and Julia Presniakova reported on this post
