1,500 people evacuated from heavily bombed Mariupol
Nearly 1,500 people were evacuated from the heavily bombed southeastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol in private cars on Tuesday, Ukrainian officials said.
The evacuees left Mariupol in private vehicles because evacuation buses and humanitarian cargo could not make it into the city, officials said.
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Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said that in addition to the evacuees in Mariupol, another 3,846 people evacuated from other towns across the country, including 1,080 from the Luhansk separatist area of eastern Ukraine.
The evacuation came as Igor Konashenkov, a spokesperson for the Russian Ministry of Defense, said on Tuesday that Mariupol would be "liberated from nationalists" by Russian forces, according to the Russian state-run TASS news service.
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Konashenkov also said Moscow has repeatedly offered Ukrainian troops in Kyiv a chance to lay down their arms and that the offer was extended again on Tuesday morning.
"However, these proposals are constantly ignored by the Kyiv regime," Konashenkov said, according to TASS.