First lady Jill Biden will meet with US service members and embassy personnel, Ukrainian civilians who have been displaced in the invasion, humanitarian aid workers and teachers on her visit to Romania and Slovakia from 5-9 Mai.

She will be meeting the US military service members in Romania’s Mihail Kogalniceau Airbase on 6 May before setting out for Bucharest where she will meet Romanian government officials, US embassy staff, humanitarian aid workers and teachers working with displaced Ukrainian children, her office said.

Marking Mother’s Day on Sunday, the first lady will meet Ukrainian mothers and children who fled their homes in Ukraine after Russia launched a full-scale invasion in the country.

Ms Biden will also visit the Slovakian cities of Bratislava, Kosice and Vysne Nemecke, where she will meet with government officials, refugees and aid workers.

The first group of civilians evacuated from Mariupol’s Azovstal steel plant will reach southeastern Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia this morning, president Volodymyr Zelensky said as he welcomed the functioning of a corridor to safety.

"Aujourd'hui, for the first time in all the days of the war, this vital corridor has started working. For the first time there were two days of real ceasefire on this territory. More than a hundred civilians have already been evacuated – women and children first of all. Who were fleeing hostilities there. At Azovstal,” Mr Zelensky said in a video message on late Sunday.

Il ajouta: “Given all the complexities of the process, the first evacuees will arrive in Zaporizhzhia tomorrow morning. Hopefully this doesn’t fail. Our team will meet them there.

“I hope that tomorrow all the necessary conditions will be met to continue the evacuation of people from Mariupol. We plan to start at 8am,” the Ukrainian president said.

The deputy commander of the Azov regiment, Sviastoslav Palamar, said he was glad that evacuations from the last section of Mariupol had begun as it did not make sense to “continue carrying on this massacre”.

“The best solution in this situation is our evacuation. Does it make a sense to continue carrying on this massacre?” Palamar said.

The sprawling steel plant represents the last major section of battered Mariupol not held by the Russian forces who are otherwise occupying the port city.

Evacuations of around 100 civilians were carried out on Sunday and the deputy commander said he is hoping the operations would continue till everyone — including soldiers — is evacuated from the plant.

It had been a challenge to reach some of the wounded inside the plant, il a dit.

“There’s rubble. We have no special equipment. It’s hard for soldiers to pick up slabs weighing tons only with their arms," il a dit. Mines, rockets, artillery shells and unexploded cluster ordnance cover the the Azovstal plant, il a dit.

Four civilians have been killed and another 11 people have been injured by Russian shelling in Donetsk, a Ukrainian regional governor has said.

Reuters adds:The deaths and seven of the injuries were in the northern city of Lyman, governor Pavlo Kyrylenko wrote in a Telegram post. One person also died in the city of Bakhmut from injuries received in the Luhansk region, il a dit.

In the same post, Kyrylenko said that it was impossible to determine the number of victims in the bombed-out port city of Mariupol and the town of Volnovakha, which is controlled by pro-Kremlin separatists.

Here are some images of the partial evacuation of civilians out of the Azostal steel plant in Mariupol on Sunday:

Allemagne says it’s making progress on weaning itself off Russian fossil fuels and expects to be fully independent of Russian crude oil imports by late summer.

Economy and Climate Minister Robert Habeck said Sunday that Europe’s largest economy has reduced the share of Russian energy imports to 12% for oil, 8% for coal and 35% for natural gas. Germany has been under strong pressure from Ukraine and other nations in L'Europe  to cut energy imports from Russia that are worth billions of euros, which help fill Russian President Vladimir Poutine‘s war chest.

“All these steps that we are taking require an enormous joint effort from all actors and they also mean costs that are felt by both the economy and consumers,” Habeck said in a statement. “But they are necessary if we no longer want to be blackmailed by Russia.”

President Volodymyr Zelensky has accused Moscow of waging “a war of extermination,” saying Russian shelling had hit food, grain and fertilizer warehouses, and residential neighborhoods in the Kharkiv, Donbas and other regions.

Il a dit: “What could be Russia‘s strategic success in this war? Honestly, I do not know. The ruined lives of people and the burned or stolen property will give nothing to Russia.”

President Volodymyr Zelensky has described his meeting with US house speaker Nancy Pelosi in Kyiv as a powerful signal of support in a difficult time.

Speaking during his nightly address on Sunday night, Zelensky said Ukrainians “are grateful to all partners who send such important and powerful signals of support by visiting our capital at such a difficult time.”