Mariupol evacuation push resumes; Pelosi met Zelensky in Kyiv

Ukrainian officials say they have carried out a successful attack on a key Russian command post near the war’s eastern front, claiming significant casualties in an area where Moscow’s forces have been largely stalled.

Oleksiy Arestovych, a military adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, said a volley of rockets destroyed a headquarters for Russia’s ground troops and airborne forces in Izyum, an eastern city near the Donbas region that has become a hub for Russian military operations.

He said preliminary estimates indicate that the toll among Russian troops is high and that “there are senior officers among the dead.” The Washington Post could not immediately verify the assertion.

Denmark and Sweden have issued Moscow a diplomatic reprimand after accusing a Russian plane of violating their countries’ airspaces, the latest clash between the Kremlin and members of the European Union.

The Scandinavian countries said Sunday that they were “summoning” Russia’s ambassadors to their countries for a meeting at their respective foreign ministries — a public rebuke in the world of international relations.

Authorities in Denmark and Sweden had reported that a Russian AN-30 survey plane briefly violated their airspace on Friday, flying near a Danish island in the Baltic Sea and a town on the southern tip of Sweden.

RIGA, Latvia — In his two-bedroom Moscow apartment, 35-year-old start-up wizard Pavel Telitchenko spent years considering a move from Russia, fearing the gradual rise of a police state. Then, three days after the Kremlin’s tanks rolled into Ukraine, he made the hard choice — packing up his young family, along with his prized vinyl-record collection, and joining a historic exodus that includes a massive outflow of Russia’s best and brightest minds in tech.

“I did not want to make an emotional decision, but I could not raise my son in a country like that,” said Telitchenko, who resettled in neighboring Latvia in March with his wife and 3-year-old son. He spoke in their comfortable Riga two-story walk-up, standing near a high shelf with a white Santa Claus statue from his childhood — a reminder of what he had left behind.

More high-level Americans visited the Ukrainian capital this weekend, while about 400 miles away, long-awaited evacuations began at a steel plant in Mariupol. Elsewhere in the east, front-line fighting continued as Russia sought more territory in Donbas.

Here are some of the major developments from across Ukraine:

Mariupol: About 100 civilians were evacuated from the Azovstal steel plant Sunday, but hundreds more, including dozens of children, are awaiting rescue, Ukrainian officials said. Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk called the situation “a real humanitarian catastrophe.” Mariupol’s mayor urged residents to leave the city on Sunday, calling it “one of the last real chances” to get out.

The “Ghost of Kyiv” — that’s what admirers called a Ukrainian fighter pilot who is believed to have shot down 40 enemy planes. Over the weekend, Ukrainian officials admitted that the ghost, in fact, never existed.

“Ghost of Kyiv is a superhero-legend whose character was created by Ukrainians,” Ukraine’s air force said Saturday, confirming that it was all a bit of mythmaking.

The news came two days after the Times of London identified the ghost as Maj. Stepan Tarabalka, a pilot who died March 13 in an air battle with Russian forces.

KYIV, Ukraine — During the communist era, people would parade through Maidan, Kyiv’s central square, on the first of May to show support for the Soviet government. Then, in 2004, Ukraine’s road to democracy began in the same square, with hundreds of thousands of people protesting the presidential election results. And in 2014, the square became the locus of events that gave rise to permanent pro-Western changes in Ukraine.

There is a semblance of peace in the square that belies the harsh reality of a war devastating other areas of Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is praising the work by international partners to evacuate civilians from the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, saying that for the first time “there were two days of real cease-fire” in the war-torn territory.

“Today, for the first time in all the days of the war, this vital corridor has started working,” he said in a Sunday video address shared on Telegram. “More than a hundred civilians have already been evacuated — women and children first of all.”

Zelensky said the evacuation of dozens of civilians from the plant — where the last Ukrainian fighters resisting Russian troops in Mariupol have been holed up for weeks — comes after weeks of attempts and negotiations.

While about 100 civilians have been evacuated from Mariupol’s Azovstal steel plant, Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Sunday that hundreds more, including dozens of children, are still waiting to be taken to safety.

In a Twitter thread on its official account, the ministry welcomed the evacuation operation underway but warned that “more is still to be done,” pleading for additional humanitarian corridors to evacuate the rest of the civilians as well as the hundreds of wounded Ukrainian soldiers who remain at the plant and need “urgent” medical treatment.