LVIV, Ukraine — Fresh from an unannounced visit to Kyiv, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi met Monday with the president of Poland, thanking him and his country for taking in the lion’s share of Ukrainians who have fled their country since the war there began.
The United Nations says the number of Ukrainian refugees has now topped 5.5 million. The world body was also assisting Monday with a second day of evacuations from the southern city of Mariupol, where at least hundreds of people have been surrounded by Russian troops in a sprawling steel plant that has become the last redoubt of Ukrainian forces and some civilians.
Pelosi, who was joined by several high-ranking congressional Democrats, said in a statement from Warsaw that they “expressed America’s deep gratitude to the Polish government and Polish people” for taking in refugees and aiding Ukrainian fighters. Polish President Andrzej Duda, in brief public remarks, called the war a “crucial” time for his country.
The highest-level U.S. official to visit Ukraine since Russia invaded Feb. 24, Pelosi departed the region later Monday. Her swing through Ukraine and Poland followed a similar tour last week by the U.S. secretaries of State and Defense.
The White House said Monday that First Lady Jill Biden would travel to Slovakia and Romania over the coming weekend to meet U.S. military service members as well as government and humanitarian workers dealing with an influx of refugees.
In Ukraine, Russian forces have largely taken over Mariupol, a strategic port on the Sea of Azov. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in his nightly video address, said he expected around 100 Mariupol civilians who were evacuated Sunday to arrive Monday in the inland city of Zaporizhzhia.
Zelenskyy described evacuation corridors as one of the few subjects to see progress from off-and-on talks between Russia and Ukraine. He said about 350,000 people had been given safe passage from battle zones over the last months.
At the same time, there was a report of new attacks on Mariupol, a once-thriving cosmopolitan city where reported mass graves and dwindling food supplies have turned it into a symbol of the war’s brutality.
A mayoral aid, Petro Andryushchenko, said Monday that Mariupol’s Azovstal steel plant was hit with shelling Sunday even as evacuations overseen by the U.N. and the International Red Cross were taking place.
“As soon as the buses left Azovstal with the evacuees, new shelling began immediately,” Andryushchenko said in a Ukrainian TV interview.
The Mariupol City Council said in a statement Monday that, “despite all the difficulties, the evacuations of civilians from Mariupol to Zaporizhzhia must take place.”
Information on the situation at the steelworks has been difficult to obtain and ascertain even for local officials. Some estimates have put the number of those surrounded by Russian troops at 600. Others have said there are at least 2,000 people taking shelter in the complex.
A commander in Ukraine’s national guard, Denys Shlega, said Sunday in a televised interview that there were “several dozen small children” there as well as 500 injured soldiers and “numerous” bodies of the dead.
The worst fighting continued overnight in eastern Ukraine, where a 300-mile battlefront has become a center of Russia’s attempt to capture the industrial Donbas region.
In its morning operational update, the Ukrainian military said that Russia had deployed more antiaircraft missile systems in occupied areas of Luhansk, one of the two provinces that make up the Donbas, and that there was a continuing threat of missile strikes in the battle zone from Belarus, Ukraine’s northern neighbor and an ally of Russia.
