KYIV, Ukraine — As Russian troops mounted a new push Thursday to seize control of the besieged city of Mariupol, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy pleaded for a cease-fire to allow the evacuation of hundreds of civilians trapped beneath a steel plant in a sprawling complex of subterranean bunkers and tunnels.
With the Kremlin’s war on Ukraine entering its 11th week and Russia eager to proclaim victory in Mariupol before Monday, when the nation commemorates its role in defeating Nazi Germany during World War II, Zelenskyy said time was needed “to lift people out of those basements, out of those underground shelters” at the Azovstal steel plant, which is housing civilians as well as the last contingent of Ukrainian fighters in the city.
“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 a video address, adding that 344 people had been evacuated from Mariupol in a second round of rescues Wednesday and taken to Zaporizhzhia, around 140 miles northwest. The situation at the steel plant has become more dire, Ukrainian officials said, because Russian troops had breached the plant’s grounds.
