Evacuation from Mariupol began simultaneously with the war, but the trains were empty/Illustrative photo

Mayor of Mariupol Vadym Boychenko said that as soon as Russia started a full-scale war with Ukraine, evacuation was announced in Mariupol.

But people are not very wanted to leave the city. Most thought that they would “shoot” a little and it would end.

Most people did not imagine the consequences

The mayor of the city admitted that he also thought that everyone will pass. But still, local authorities announced an evacuation.

We told people about the possibility of evacuation. Back in February, Ukrzaliznytsia organized evacuation trains from Mariupol. Three of them moved – to Western Ukraine. But do you know that these trains left the city half empty? We told people about the opportunity to leave the city, but few people wanted to use it, he said.

He added that when people realized the seriousness of the situation, it was already too late. The enemy has locked the ring. And hundreds of thousands of people are stuck in the city.

Let's be honest – not only me, the majority of Mariupol residents thought the same way, the war will be like in 2014. Shoot-shoot and agree. And everything will calm down, and why in this case leave. And when they realized that this was a completely different war, it was too late. The enemy has locked the ring. And already on March 1, we could neither enter the city, nor leave, nor bring in humanitarian aid, nor pick up people,” Boychenko recalls.

He stressed that, starting from March 1, not a single humanitarian convoy could to get to Mariupol – the invaders did not let them through.

Some Mariupol residents managed to escape from the city in early March, but it was very risky. And some invaders were ordered to return to the city at the first checkpoint.

The invaders told people: we don't have a command to let people out. Since the beginning of March, a lot of work has begun on organizing the evacuation, carried out at the highest state level. The work was personally coordinated by Irina Vereshchuk, Minister for the Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories, added the mayor of the city.