Buses rescue 2,000 Mariupol refugees but Russia blocking aid, says Ukraine

A group of 2,000 people have made it to safety from the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol, as the success of the wider rescue operation for more than 100,000 trapped civilians still hangs in the balance.

Russian forces allowed the vehicles to pass, in what represented a small breakthrough after the failure of several previous evacuation attempts. Those onboard the buses had made it out of Mariupol to Berdiansk on their own, after which they were allowed to leave Russian-controlled territory. A further 631 people managed to flee Mariupol in private cars on Thursday night, the Ukrainian government said.

Up to 170,000 residents remain hemmed in by Russian ground forces in the strategically important coastal city, which before war broke out last month was home to about 430,000 people.

Mariupol has borne some of the worst violence of the conflict so far. Incessant airstrikes and shelling have hit civilian infrastructure, including a maternity hospital, aid warehouse and arts centre sheltering displaced people.

On Thursday, Kyiv and Moscow agreed a humanitarian corridor along the route from Mariupol to Berdiansk and then Zaporizhzhia for several hours at 10am (8am BST) on Friday, but other than the the successful evacuation of the 2,000 people who had already made it to Berdiansk, by late afternoon little progress had been made.

A bus convoy had not been able to approach the dividing line into Mariupol, the International Committee for the Red Cross spokesperson Ewan Watson told reporters in Geneva, with complex logistics and instructions still being worked out and conveyed to military units on both sides. It was not immediately clear whether the convoy to which he was referring was the same one that transported people from Berdiansk.

Peace talks aimed at ending the five-week-old war, which has killed thousands and forced 4 million Ukrainians to flee the country, resumed by video link on Friday. Significant progress did not seem likely, however, following the stalled Mariupol evacuation attempt and Russian accusations of a Ukrainian helicopter attack earlier in the day. The alleged gunship assault on an an oil depot on the Russian side of the border, in Belgorod, is the first such reported incursion of its airspace by Ukrainian forces.