Ukraine rushing to evacuate Mariupol after Red Cross warnings

The Red Cross and Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said that efforts are underway to evacuate civilians from the Ukrainian city of Mariupol as officials heed the humanitarian organization’s warnings, which have underscored the necessity to get Ukrainians out of the besieged city.

Vereshchuk and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said that 45 buses were in transit to the city, with evacuations slated to begin on Friday, The Guardian reported.

The ICRC Ukraine posted a video on Twitter on Friday with a woman from the organization saying they were in transit to Mariupol “in order to ensure safe passage for the civilians who desperately want to flee the city.”

A safe corridor had been agreed to by Russia, the ICRC and Vereshchuk confirmed, but the ICRC signaled that the exact terms may not be fully agreed upon and urged both sides to come to a mutual accord on it, Reuters reported.

Mariupol has seen some of the worst devastation since Russia began its invasion into neighboring Ukraine weeks ago, and the ICRC warned that the evacuation of its civilians was “hugely important.”

“Time is running out to help these people. This evacuation is hugely important,” Alyona Synenko, a spokesperson for the ICRC, said, according to The Guardian. “It is essential we get concrete and precise agreements from both sides on times and routes tomorrow. These instructions need to be conveyed to military units on the ground and they must be respected.”

The ICRC said last month that unless life-saving aid and evacuation routes are agreed upon, Mariupol residents could see a “worse-case scenario.”

“Hundreds of thousands of the city’s residents are now facing extreme or total shortages of basic necessities like food, water and medicine,” the ICRC said in a statement. 

“People of all ages, including our staff, are sheltering in unheated basements, risking their lives to make short runs outside for food and water. Dead bodies, of civilians and combatants, remain trapped under the rubble or lying in the open where they fell.”