After weeks of blockade, around 260 Ukrainian soldiers have left the Azov steelworks in Mariupol.
Among them were 53 seriously injured, as the Ukrainian general staff announced on Tuesday night.
Almost at the same time as the evacuation, there was a new Russian air raid on the city of Lviv in western Ukraine.
211 other Ukrainian soldiers from the Azowstal steelworks were also taken to a town occupied by Russian troops.
They were later to be released in a prisoner exchange, it said.
Work is still in progress on the withdrawal of further fighters from the plant.
Several hundred soldiers are said to be on the site.
Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maljar emphasized that freeing Azowstal was not possible.
A planned exchange of prisoners has not yet been officially confirmed by the Russian side.
The Russian Defense Ministry had previously only spoken of a ceasefire for the evacuation.
Zelenskyj: "Ukraine needs its heroes alive"
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his video address that Ukraine needs its heroes alive.
The International Red Cross and the United Nations were also involved in the evacuation of the soldiers.
The port city of Mariupol was surrounded shortly after the Russian invasion in February.
The strategically important city was exposed to heavy bombing and rocket attacks.
Experts and Ukrainian authorities assume thousands of civilian deaths.
Russian troops gradually took control after the siege.
However, the last Ukrainian defenders of the city holed up in the huge steelworks with several underground floors.
The Russian troops did not risk any storming attempts, but sealed off all entrances.
"Block this industrial zone so that not even a fly comes out," Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin instructed his military in front of the camera.
The area was repeatedly bombed.
Hundreds of civilians who also fled to the steelworks from advancing Russian troops had already been evacuated from the factory premises in the past few days.
The withdrawal of the soldiers, who had hardly any provisions and water, was negotiated for a long time.
In Ukraine, there were also accusations against the government in Kyiv that it had abandoned the last defenders of Mariupol.
Another rocket attack near Lviv
The area around the city of Lviv in western Ukraine was again the target of an air raid.
The attack was aimed at a military facility in the Yavoriv district on the border with Poland, local military chief Maxim Kositsky wrote on Telegram.
Mayor Andriy Sadowy emphasized that there was no information about rocket hits in the city and thanked the air defense.
In mid-March, a Russian airstrike hit the military training area in Javoriv, killing 35 people according to Ukrainian sources.
In Yavoriv, Ukrainian soldiers had trained with Western instructors in recent years.