JAKARTA - Ukraine's Mariupol City Authority hopes to evacuate some 6,000 women, children and the elderly from the city by Wednesday, if the initial agreement with Russia goes into effect.
Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boichenko, who has left Mariupol, said 90 buses were waiting to make their way to the devastated southern port city. He warned that the agreement was still only a preliminary arrangement with about 100,000 civilians remaining there.
If the deal goes into effect, it would be the first agreement reached to create a safe corridor for civilians to flee from Mariupol to other Ukrainian cities since March 5.
However, the deal quickly collapsed, and many residents have been trapped there for weeks without electricity, running water and other supplies.
"We are planning to send buses to Mariupol but for now it is only a preliminary agreement," Boichenko said on national television.
He further explained that tens of thousands of people had died in the city on the Sea of Azov, most of which had been destroyed since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24. The number could not be verified by Reuters.
Meanwhile, Russia denies deliberately targeting civilians and there was no immediate word from Moscow whether a humanitarian corridor would be established in Mariupol.
"Given the disastrous humanitarian situation in Mariupol, this is where we will focus our efforts today," Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk wrote on Facebook, adding people wishing to leave Mariupol should gather in the city by 2pm. (1100 GMT).
"Given the extremely difficult security situation, changes may occur during the corridor action," he said.
Mariupol, home to more than 400,000 people before the war, is an important port for industrial and agricultural exports, home to some of Ukraine's largest metal factories.
Its occupation would give Russia full control of the coast of the Sea of Azov, and a secure land bridge to link the Russian mainland and pro-Russian separatist territories in the east, with the Crimean peninsula which Moscow captured and annexed in 2014.
Liudmyla Denisova, Ukraine's ombudswoman for human rights, said last week that Russia had "taken" 134,000 people from the Mariupol area it now controls, with 33,000 of them forcibly deported. Reuters was unable to determine the accuracy of the statistics. In addition, Russia said it was offering humanitarian assistance to those wishing to leave Mariupol.
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