Although Katya 2 and Vanya (and the cat) were able to get on an evacuation bus in Berdyansk yesterday, they still haven’t made it to Zaporozhia. The Russian roadblock at Vasylivka (about an hour south of Zaporozhia) is doing everything possible to annoy, harass and delay people. Viktoria says that the soldiers are probably shaking down people for money and valuables, and she’s probably right. (Vasylivka is also where many cars came under fire during the first days when cars were reported as making it out of Mariupol.)

A follow-up article on the Mariupol city website says that eventually buses and cars were permitted to get on their way, but we haven’t gotten word as yet of Katya 2 and Vanya arriving. The plan had been for them to go immediately to the train station and get the evacuation train today, but clearly that didn’t happen. And since a weekend curfew has been declared, it’s very likely that there won’t be any trains over the weekend. Fortunately there are resources set up for the refugees, so they should be OK for a couple days. Zhenya’s been in touch with a friend in Zaporozhia who will help get them on the train.

As further proof of Russia’s total turn to Nazism, they have taken to driving commandeered/stolen buses around Mariupol with “Zaporozhia” as the destination. The people picked up are driven to Donetsk instead, in the Russian controlled part of Ukraine. Forced evacuations, just like the Nazis did to Ukrainians in WWII.

It’s also being reported that the staff, doctors and people sheltering in City Hospital 1 were also forcibly evacuated to Russia. No confirmation of this so far, but the information coming from the Mariupol City Council has been proven to be pretty accurate (though I think their number of civilians who have fled the city tend to be rather large and optimistic and may not be fully accurate). I’d posted a story about how this hospital had been weathering the attack; I guess that annoyed the Russian so much they had to put an end to it.