Ukraine latest news: Fresh efforts to free civilians as new ceasefire

The evacuees arrived in Poltava from Sumy last night, exhausted and tense after what must have seemed the longest journey of their lives. They tumbled off buses outside the railway station and rushed for a waiting train, anxious to be on their way as far as possible from the danger zone.

Many on the first convoy out of Sumy were medical students from India who’d been in town when Russia invaded. As friends scrambled to find seats on a train west, one woman described two "miserable" weeks living mostly underground with dwindling supplies of water and food. "We were starving," Manisa told me.

Another Indian student said the situation had been getting worse and more frightening with every day. On Monday night a Russian airstrike on a residential area killed at least 20 people including children. The shelling and bombing have been relentless and ruthless.

BBC Copyright: BBC Many of those arriving hurried on to trains to continue their journey Image caption: Many of those arriving hurried on to trains to continue their journey

The evacuation buses were crammed full of people and some said they had to stand all the way to Poltava, 175km (108miles) south of Sumy. The convoy took almost 12 hours to get here, forced to drive a long way round areas of active fighting.

One student told me that as they’d left Sumy they'd seen Russian artillery and tanks. We have seen and verified one video that confirms there was shooting as one of the evacuation convoys gathered, but local officials say all buses laid on to get civilians out of Sumy yesterday were eventually able to leave the city successfully.

It was a long and gruelling trip; one convoy only arrived at 04:00. But it was the first successful mass evacuation in this conflict so far. Efforts to get people out of the besieged port city of Mariupol to the south have failed, repeatedly.