Ukraine's Mariupol says Russia forcefully deported thousands of its people

Russia's Defence Ministry said buses carrying people it called refugees from Mariupol began to arrive to Russia on Tuesday.

The city council of Ukraine's Mariupol said Russian forces forcefully deported several thousand people from the besieged city last week, after Russia had spoken of "refugees" arriving from the strategic port.

"Over the past week, several thousand Mariupol residents were deported onto the Russian territory," the council said in a statement on its Telegram channel late on Saturday.

"The occupiers illegally took people from the Livoberezhniy district and from the shelter in the sports club building, where more than a thousand people (mostly women and children) were hiding from the constant bombing."

Reuters could not independently verify the claims.

Russia's Defence Ministry said buses carrying people it called refugees from Mariupol began to arrive to Russia on Tuesday, Russian news agency RIA Novosti reported last week. The ministry was not immediately available to comment on the Mariupol city council's claims.

Some 400,000 people have been trapped in Mariupol, on the Sea of Azov, for more than two weeks, sheltering from heavy bombardment that has severed central supplies of electricity, heating and water, according to local authorities.

The Russian TASS news agency reported on Saturday that 13 buses were moving to Russia, carrying more than 350 people, about 50 of whom were to be sent by rail to the Yaroslavl region and the rest to temporary transition centres in Taganrog, a port city in Russia's Rostov region.