Serhiy Haidai, the regional governor of Luhansk, said in a Facebook post that 30 of the people hidden there had been rescued so far.
“Most likely, all 60 people who remain under the rubble are now dead,” Gov. Serhiy Haidai wrote on the Telegram messaging app. Russian shelling also killed two boys, ages 11 and 14, in the nearby town of Pryvillia, he said.
Haidai said "almost the whole village was hidden. Everyone who didn't have time to evacuate."
Now that evacuations have successfully removed all women, children and elderly from the Azovstol steel mill in Mariupol, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said another mission will attempt to rescue injured people and medics.
Zelenskyy also said in his nightly video address to the nation late Saturday that the effort to also evacuate the Ukrainian soldiers still there, the "heroes who defended Mariupol," would be "difficult."
Iryna Vereshchuk, a deputy prime minister for Ukraine, announced Saturday that the evacuations of vulnerable citizens had taken place from the steel mill, where civilians and Ukrainian troops were the last holdout from Russian forces. More than 300 people were evacuated in recent days, Zelenskyy said, after conditions in the underground bunkers increasingly worsened and Russia ramped up its shelling.
Russia held a dress rehearsal on Saturday for the military parade to commemorate Victory Day on May 9, when the country marks the defeat of Nazi Germany during World War II.
In Moscow on Saturday, an RS-24 Yars intercontinental ballistic missile rolled through Red Square as part of the rehearsal, with warplanes and helicopters flying overhead, troops marching in formation and self-propelled artillery vehicles rumbling past.
Send an email
