KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy pleaded Thursday for a cease-fire to allow the evacuation of civilians trapped in a sprawling complex of underground bunkers and tunnels beneath a Mariupol steel plant, where fighters continue to try to fend off the Russian troops who have taken over the rest of the city.
As the Kremlin’s war on Ukraine entered its 11th week, Zelenskyy said time was needed “to lift people out of those basements, out of those underground shelters” in Mariupol, the southern city whose bombardment and intense suffering have become a symbol of the human costs of the war.
“In the present conditions, we cannot use heavy equipment to clear the rubble away. It all has to be done by hand,” Zelenskyy said in an early morning address, adding that 344 people were evacuated from Mariupol in a second round of rescues Wednesday and taken to Zaporizhzhia, around 140 miles northwest. At least hundreds remained trapped.
