Thirteen more buses with about 300 refugees from Mariupol have reached the border with Russia in the Rostov region, the Russian defense ministry said on Thursday. "By now, 13 buses with around 300 people from Mariupol have arrived at the border in the Rostov region. Three buses have already crossed the border," the ministry said, adding that there are many women and children among the evacuees.
According to the ministry, some of these people have been hiding in the basements of apartment blocks or bomb shelters for three weeks. "People were blocked by armed groups of Ukrainian nationalists who used them as a human shield and did not let them use safe corridors," the ministry said.
The ministry said earlier that four convoys of 200 buses had been organized to evacuate people from Mariupol. The first two buses with 59 refugees crossed the Russian border in the Rostov region on Tuesday evening. People were accommodated at a temporary accommodation center in Taganrog.