People at the temporary accommodation center for evacuees from Mariupol. File photoMOSCOW, April 12Over the past day, 625 civilians were able to evacuate from Mariupol in the eastern direction, for all the time more than 136 thousand people have been evacuated along this route, Colonel-General Mikhail Mizintsev, head of the National Defense Control Center of the Russian Federation, said on Tuesday. «From Mariupol through the humanitarian corridor to eastward, without any participation of the Ukrainian side, 136,284 people have already been saved from the lawlessness arranged by the nationalists, including 625 over the past day,» he said.
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At the time of the proclamation of the DPR in 2014, Mariupol, with a population of about 450 thousand people, was the second largest city in the republic after Donetsk. However, in June of that year, the Ukrainian security forces regained control of Mariupol, and its eastern suburbs became one of the hottest places of conflict in Ukraine. On March 7, 2022, Alexander Semyonov, deputy commander of the Vostok battalion of the DPR, said that the city was surrounded, and a cleansing of some of its districts had begun. Currently, the allied forces of the DPR and Russia are fighting for the final liberation of the city. Among other Ukrainian units in Mariupol, there is a nationalist regiment «Azov», against whose fighters a criminal case has been initiated in the Russian Federation. Russia launched a military operation in Ukraine on February 24. President Vladimir Putin called its goal «the protection of people who have been subjected to genocide by the Kiev regime for eight years.» For this, according to him, it is planned to carry out «demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine.» According to the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, the Armed Forces strike only at the military infrastructure and Ukrainian troops, and as of March 25, they have completed the main tasks of the first stage — they have significantly reduced the combat potential of Ukraine. The main goal in the Russian military department was called the liberation of Donbass.