By CARA AN­NA and IN­NA VARENYT­SIA | AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

ZA­POR­IZHZHIA, Ukraine (AP) — Peo­ple flee­ing be­sieged Mar­i­upol de­scribed weeks of bom­bard­ments and de­pri­va­tions as they ar­rived Mon­day in Ukrain­ian-held ter­ri­to­ry, where re­lief work­ers await­ed the first group of civil­ians freed from a steel plant that is last re­doubt of Ukrain­ian fight­ers in the dev­as­tat­ed port city.

Video post­ed on­line Sun­day by Ukrain­ian forces showed el­der­ly women and moth­ers with small chil­dren climb­ing over a steep pile of rub­ble from the sprawl­ing Azovstal steel plant and even­tu­al­ly board­ing a bus.

More than 100 civil­ians from the plant were ex­pect­ed to ar­rive in Za­por­izhzhia, about 140 miles (230 kilo­me­ters) north­west of Mar­i­upol, on Mon­day, Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Ze­len­skyy said.

The evac­u­a­tion, if suc­cess­ful, would rep­re­sent rare progress in eas­ing the hu­man cost of the al­most 10-week war, which has caused par­tic­u­lar suf­fer­ing in Mar­i­upol. Pre­vi­ous at­tempts to open safe cor­ri­dors out of the city on the Sea of Azov and oth­er places have bro­ken down. Peo­ple flee­ing Russ­ian-oc­cu­pied ar­eas in the past have said their ve­hi­cles were fired on, and Ukrain­ian of­fi­cials have re­peat­ed­ly ac­cused Russ­ian forces of shelling agreed-up­on evac­u­a­tion routes.

“To­day, for the first time in all the days of the war, this vi­tal­ly need­ed green cor­ri­dor has start­ed work­ing,” Ze­len­skyy said Sun­day in a pre-record­ed ad­dress pub­lished on his Telegram mes­sag­ing chan­nel.

At least some of the peo­ple evac­u­at­ed from the plant were ap­par­ent­ly tak­en to a vil­lage con­trolled by Moscow-backed sep­a­ratists, though Russ­ian state me­dia re­port­ed they would be al­lowed to con­tin­ue on to Ukrain­ian-held ter­ri­to­ry if they want­ed to. In the past, Ukrain­ian of­fi­cials have ac­cused Moscow’s troops of forcibly re­lo­cat­ing civil­ians from ar­eas they have cap­tured to Rus­sia; Moscow has said the peo­ple want­ed to go to Rus­sia.

While of­fi­cial evac­u­a­tions have of­ten fal­tered, many peo­ple have man­aged to flee Mar­i­upol un­der their own steam in re­cent weeks. Oth­ers are un­able to es­cape.

“Peo­ple with­out cars can­not leave. They’re des­per­ate,” said Ole­na Gib­ert, who was among those ar­riv­ing an a U.N.-backed re­cep­tion cen­tre in Za­por­izhzhia in dusty and of­ten dam­aged pri­vate cars. “You need to go get them. Peo­ple have noth­ing. We had noth­ing.”

She said many peo­ple still in Mar­i­upol wish to es­cape the Russ­ian-con­trolled city but can’t say so open­ly amid the at­mos­phere of con­stant pro-Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da. A siege of the city since the ear­ly days of the war has trapped civil­ians in ter­ri­ble con­di­tions, with scarce ac­cess to food, wa­ter, med­i­cine and elec­tric­i­ty. They have suf­fered in­tense bom­bard­ment, in­clud­ing a Russ­ian airstrike on a ma­ter­ni­ty hos­pi­tal and the bomb­ing of a the­atre.

Anas­tasi­ia Dem­byt­s­ka, who took ad­van­tage of the brief cease-fire around the evac­u­a­tion of civil­ians from the steel plant to leave with her daugh­ter, nephew and dog, told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press her fam­i­ly sur­vived by cook­ing on a makeshift stove and drink­ing well wa­ter.

She said could see the steel plant from her win­dow, when she dared to look out.

“We could see the rock­ets fly­ing” and clouds of smoke over the plant, she said.

A de­fend­er of the plant said Russ­ian forces re­sumed shelling the plant Sun­day as soon as some civil­ians there were evac­u­at­ed.

Denys Shle­ga, com­man­der of the 12th Op­er­a­tional Brigade of Ukraine’s Na­tion­al Guard, said in a tele­vised in­ter­view that sev­er­al hun­dred civil­ians re­main trapped along­side near­ly 500 wound­ed sol­diers and “nu­mer­ous” dead bod­ies.

“Sev­er­al dozen small chil­dren are still in the bunkers un­der­neath the plant,” Shle­ga said. It was un­clear whether there would be fur­ther evac­u­a­tion at­tempts.

Be­fore the week­end evac­u­a­tion, about 1,000 civil­ians were al­so be­lieved to be in the the sprawl­ing, So­vi­et-era steel plant, along with an es­ti­mat­ed 2,000 Ukrain­ian fight­ers. As many as 100,000 peo­ple may still be in Mar­i­upol over­all.

The city, which had a pre-war pop­u­la­tion of more than 400,000, is a key Russ­ian tar­get be­cause its cap­ture would de­prive Ukraine of a vi­tal port, al­low Moscow to es­tab­lish a land cor­ri­dor to the Crimean Penin­su­la, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014, and free up troops for fight­ing else­where in the Don­bas, now Rus­sia’s main fo­cus.

A Ukrain­ian of­fi­cer at the plant urged groups like the U.N. and the Red Cross to en­sure the evac­u­a­tion of wound­ed fight­ers, though he ac­knowl­edged that reach­ing some of the in­jured is dif­fi­cult.

“There’s rub­ble. We have no spe­cial equip­ment. It’s hard for sol­diers to pick up slabs weigh­ing tons on­ly with their arms,” Svi­atoslav Pala­mar, deputy com­man­der of the Azov Reg­i­ment, told the AP in an in­ter­view. “We hear voic­es of peo­ple who are still alive” in­side shat­tered build­ings.

The Azov Reg­i­ment orig­i­nat­ed as a far-right para­mil­i­tary unit and is now part of the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary.

In his night­ly ad­dress Sun­day, Ze­len­skyy ac­cused Moscow of wag­ing “a war of ex­ter­mi­na­tion,” say­ing Russ­ian shelling had hit food, grain and fer­til­iz­er ware­hous­es, and res­i­den­tial neigh­bour­hoods in the city of Kharkiv, in the Don­bas and oth­er re­gions.

Af­ter fail­ing to cap­ture Kyiv in the open­ing weeks of the war, Russ­ian forces have em­barked on a ma­jor mil­i­tary op­er­a­tion to seize the Don­bas, Ukraine’s east­ern in­dus­tri­al heart­land where Moscow-backed sep­a­ratists have been bat­tling Ukrain­ian forces since 2014.

The Russ­ian De­fense Min­istry said its forces struck dozens of mil­i­tary tar­gets in east­ern Ukraine in the past 24 hours, in­clud­ing con­cen­tra­tions of troops and weapons and an am­mu­ni­tion de­pot near Cher­vone in the Za­por­izhzhia re­gion.

The in­for­ma­tion could not be in­de­pen­dent­ly ver­i­fied. The Ukrain­ian pres­i­dent’s of­fice said at least three peo­ple were killed and an­oth­er three, in­clud­ing a child, were wound­ed in the east­ern Luhan­sk re­gion over the last 24 hours. It said that four peo­ple were wound­ed in the shelling in Donet­sk, an­oth­er east­ern re­gion.

The re­gion­al ad­min­is­tra­tion in the Za­por­izhzhia re­gion far­ther west said that at least two peo­ple died and an­oth­er four were wound­ed in the Russ­ian shelling of the town of Orikhiv.

A full pic­ture of bat­tle un­fold­ing in east­ern Ukraine is hard to cap­ture. The fight­ing makes it dan­ger­ous for re­porters to move around, and both sides have in­tro­duced tight re­stric­tions on re­port­ing from the com­bat zone.

West­ern of­fi­cials say Rus­sia is ad­vanc­ing slow­ly in its east­ern of­fen­sive and has cap­tured some vil­lages but is in­flict­ing heavy civil­ian ca­su­al­ties through in­dis­crim­i­nate bomb­ing. Ukrain­ian forces are fight­ing their of­fen­sive vil­lage-by-vil­lage while civil­ians flee airstrikes and ar­tillery shelling.

The British De­fense Min­istry said in a dai­ly brief­ing Mon­day that it be­lieves more than a quar­ter of all the fight­ing units Rus­sia has de­ployed in Ukraine are now “com­bat in­ef­fec­tive” — un­able to fight be­cause of loss of troops or equip­ment.

The British mil­i­tary be­lieves Rus­sia com­mit­ted over 120 so-called “bat­tal­ion tac­ti­cal groups” in­to the war since Feb­ru­ary, which rep­re­sents 65% of all of Moscow’s com­bat strength.

Ukraine’s mil­i­tary claimed Mon­day to have de­stroyed two small Russ­ian pa­trol boats in the Black Sea. Drone footage post­ed on­line showed what the Ukraini­ans de­scribed as two Russ­ian Rap­tor boats ex­plod­ing af­ter be­ing struck by mis­siles.

The AP could not im­me­di­ate­ly in­de­pen­dent­ly con­firm the strikes.

Hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars in mil­i­tary as­sis­tance has flowed in­to Ukraine dur­ing the war, but Rus­sia’s vast ar­mouries mean Ukraine still needs mas­sive sup­port. Ze­len­skyy has ap­pealed to the West for more weapons, and tougher eco­nom­ic sanc­tions on Rus­sia.

U.S. House Speak­er Nan­cy Pelosi and oth­er U.S. law­mak­ers vis­it­ed Ze­len­skyy on Sat­ur­day to show Amer­i­can sup­port.

Eu­ro­pean Union en­er­gy min­is­ters were meet­ing Mon­day to dis­cuss a new set of sanc­tions, which could in­clude re­stric­tions on Russ­ian oil — though Rus­sia-de­pen­dent mem­bers of the 27-na­tion bloc in­clud­ing Hun­gary and Slo­va­kia are wary of tak­ing tough ac­tion.

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In­na Varenyt­sia re­port­ed from Kyiv, Ukraine. As­so­ci­at­ed Press jour­nal­ists Yesi­ca Fisch in Slo­vian­sk, Jon Gam­brell and Yuras Kar­manau in Lviv, Mstyslav Cher­nov in Kharkiv, and AP staff around the world con­tributed to this re­port.