* Moscow steps up offensive in southern and eastern Ukraine
* Twenty civilians vacated from the Azovstal plant
* Luhansk and Donetsk regions, Odessa airport hit by missiles
by Hamuda Hassan, Jorge Silva and Natalia Zinets
DOBROPILLIA/KYIV, Ukraine, May 1 (Reuters) – Russian military fired missiles into eastern and southern Ukraine on Saturday, Ukrainian officials reported, as women and children were evacuated from at the Azovstal factory, in the besieged port of Mariupol, where they had holed up for more than a week.
Failing to have been able to seize Kyiv, during an offensive which left behind it a field of ruins, killed thousands of people and forced five million Ukrainians to flee abroad, Russia is now concentrating on the eastern and southern Ukraine.
Russian forces captured the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson and on April 21 Moscow claimed victory in Mariupol, although hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians took refuge in the steelworks of the city. ‘Azovstal.
The United Nations urged an evacuation agreement. A Ukrainian soldier inside the factory announced that about twenty women and children had been able to get out.
“We pull the civilians out of the rubble with ropes – the older ones, the women, the children,” Svyatoslav Palamar said.
The soldier said that Russia and Ukraine were respecting a local ceasefire and that he hoped that the civilians who had been evacuated could go to Zaporizhia, in the northwest.
Neither Russia nor the United Nations has commented on the evacuations. Hundreds of Ukrainians are still in the steelworks, Ukrainian officials said.
STRIKE ON ODESSA
A Russian missile fired from Crime hit the runway at Odessa airport, which is now impassable, said Odessa Governor Maksim Marchenko, adding that no injuries were reported.
The Ukrainian army has announced that the airport can no longer be used. Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky pledged to rebuild the airport, declaring during his daily address that “Odessa will never (forget) Russia’s behavior towards it”.
Moscow did not comment on the strike.
Moscow’s assault in the south is partly aimed at linking the Crime region, annexed in 2014, as it seeks to seize all of Donbass, made up of the provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk already partly controlled by pro-separatists. -Russians.
Volodimir Zelensky declared during his speech that Russia was “gathering additional forces to carry out new attacks against our army in the east of the country”, and that it was “trying to increase the pressure on Donbass”.
Moscow calls the war launched on February 24 a “special military operation” to disarm and “denazify” Ukraine, defend Russian-speakers from persecution and prevent the United States from using the country to threaten Russia.
Ukraine accuses Russian soldiers of carrying out atrocities in the Kyiv region earlier this month, which Moscow denies.
Peace talks were continuing between the two sides, with no progress at this stage.
“EVERYTHING IS DESTROYED”
The United States and its European allies have imposed sanctions on Russia, and provided arms and humanitarian aid to Ukraine.
US President Joe Biden has asked Congress to approve an aid package worth 33 billion dollars (31.3 billion euros) for Ukraine, including 20 billion in military aid.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Saturday that his country would continue to “give the Ukrainians the equipment they need to defend themselves”.
In Dobropillia, a mining town in Donetsk province, the shock wave of a Russian strike shattered the windows of an apartment building and left a large crater in the courtyard.
Andriy, a resident who declined to give his surname, told Reuters that his partner, who was in a room across from the courtyard at the time of the crash, had lost consciousness.
“Thank God the four children were in the kitchen,” he said. Their living room was destroyed.
The occupants of the building were trying to salvage what could be salvaged from the rubble.
“Around 9:20 a.m., this happiness happened to us. Everything was destroyed,” says Oleh sarcastically.
Russia reported Ukrainian strikes on its territory.
The authorities of Bryansk, border region of Ukraine and Bilorussia, declared that the anti-aircraft defense had thwarted an attack by the Ukrainian air force. A Russian oil terminal was hit in the fighting.
In the Kursk region, south of Bryansk, shells were fired from Ukrainian soil towards a Russian checkpoint, said Governor Roman Starovot, who reported no injuries or material damage.
Ukraine has not claimed responsibility for the strikes but has described a series of explosions in southern Russia on Wednesday as revenge and “karma” accumulated by Moscow since the start of the invasion.
(With contributions from Reuters journalists, writing by Rami Ayyub and Clarence Fernandez; French version Camille Raynaud)