Athens on Wednesday launched an operation to evacuate Greek diplomats, journalists and other citizens from the Ukrainian city of Mariupol as Russian forces pushed further into the country.

A Greek foreign ministry source said a convoy of cars would head west under Russian assurances of safety, picking up people from other cities including Dnipro and Zaporizhzhia.

“Last night, 130 people expressed a desire to leave, it’s not clear how many will turn up,” the official told AFP.

A group of 26 Greeks and family members were relocated from Odesa to Moldova on Monday, and another 50 Greeks and Cypriots from Kyiv and Odesa were flown out of Romania with their families on Tuesday, the foreign ministry said.

The Greek migration ministry has said some 1,500 people have fled to Greece from Ukraine.

But many members of Ukraine’s ethnic Greek community of over 100,000 do not want to abandon their homes.

“(Russian empress) Catherine the Great took us out of our Crimea homeland. We already lost one homeland, we don’t want to lose another,” Mariupol resident Athina Hatzinova told Greek public television ERT on Wednesday.

“I’m staying with my mother. She’s 83, and we don’t have a mode of transport.

“From the first day, my mother said she’s not leaving, I’m not leaving either,” she said, noting the distance of 1,000 kilometres (620 miles) to Moldova.

Greece says Russian airstrikes have killed a dozen members of the ethnic Greek community.

Russia denies this and says Ukrainian forces are to blame.

-AFP