U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said after talks in Kyiv on Thursday that his organisation was doing all it could to enable the evacuation of a steel plant where fighters and civilians are holed up in the city of Mariupol.
"At the present moment I can only tell you we are doing everything we can to make it happen. I’m not going to enter into any comment that could undermine that possibility," he said after meeting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
Zelenskiy said: "I trust and believe - just as many relatives of those people who are blocked in Azovstal (steel plant) do - that the Secretary-General and we will be able to have a successful result."
(Reporting by Alessandra Prentice, Writing by Aleksandar Vasovic; Editing by Timothy Heritage)