Kyiv: As Russian forces pull back from Ukraine's capital region, retreating troops are creating a catastrophic" situation for civilians by leaving mines around homes, abandoned equipment and even the bodies of those killed", President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned on Saturday.
Ukraine and its Western allies reported mounting evidence of Russia withdrawing its forces from around Kyiv and building up troop strength in eastern Ukraine.
Ukrainian fighters reclaimed several areas near the capital after forcing the Russians out or moving in after them, officials said.
The visible shift did not mean the country faced a reprieve from more than five weeks of war or that the more than four million refugees who have fled Ukraine will return soon.
Zelenskyy said he expected departed towns to endure missile strikes and rocket strikes from afar and for the battle in the east to be intense.
It's still not possible to return to normal life, as it used to be, even at the territories that we are taking back after the fighting, the president told his nation in a nightly video message. "We need wait until our land is demined, wait till we are able to assure you that there won't be new shelling.
Moscow's focus on eastern Ukraine also kept the besieged southern city of Mariupol in the crosshairs.
The port city on the Sea of Azoz is located in the mostly Russian-speaking Donbas region, where Russia-backed separatists have fought Ukrainian troops for eight years and military analysts think Russian President Vladimir Putin is determined to capture after his forces failed to secure Kyiv and other major cities.
The International Committee of the Red Cross on Saturday planned to try to get into Mariupol to evacuate residents. The Red Cross said it could not carry out the operation on Friday because it did not receive assurances the route was safe. City authorities said the Russians blocked access to the city.
The humanitarian group said a team with three vehicles and nine Red Cross staff members was on the way to help facilitate the safe passage of civilians on Saturday after the failed attempt the previous day.
In a statement late Friday, the group said its team planned to accompany a convoy of civilians out from Mariupol to another city.
Our presence will put a humanitarian marker on this planned movement of people, giving the convoy additional protection and reminding all sides of the civilian, humanitarian nature of the operation, the statement said.
The Mariupol city council on Saturday said 10 empty buses were headed to Berdyansk, a city 84 kilometres west of Mariupol, to pick up people who could get there on their own. Some 2,000 made it out of Mariupol on Friday, some on buses and some in their own vehicles, city officials said.
Evacuees boarded about 25 buses in Berdyansk and arrived around midnight to Zaporizhzhia, a city still under Ukrainian control that has
served as the destination under previous cease-fires announced — and then broken — to get civilians out and aid into
Mariupol.