A group of 2,000 people have made it to safety from the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol after travelling to nearby Berdiansk on their own.
A 42-strong convoy of buses organised by the Ukrainian government and escorted by the Red Cross brought people who had congregated in the nearby Russian-occupied city of Berdiansk to the Ukrainian-held city of Zaporizhzhia on Friday afternoon.
Russian forces allowed the vehicles to pass, in what represented a small breakthrough after the failure of several previous evacuation attempts. Those onboard the buses had made it out of Mariupol to Berdiansk without assistance, after which they were allowed to leave Russian-controlled territory.
The Kyiv authorities reiterated on Friday that no aid or evacuation convoys had been allowed to reach Mariupol itself.
Hundreds of Ukrainian refugees have also been crossing the border from Shehyni in Ukraine into Medyka, Poland after cities like Kharkiv and Mariupol in the east have run out of supplies.