Russian shelling of major cities is preventing civilians from evacuating, Ukraine says
A Ukrainian police officer runs while holding a child as the artillery echoes nearby, while fleeing Irpin on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine. Picture: AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti
Russian shelling is preventing the evacuation of civilians from the cities of Kyiv, Mariupol, Sumy, Kharkiv, Volnovakha and Mykolayiv, Ukraine’s foreign ministry has said.
In a statement, the ministry called on foreign leaders to force Russia to observe a ceasefire to prevent what it said could be a humanitarian catastrophe.
“This prevents the safe passage of humanitarian columns with Ukrainian and foreign citizens, as well as the delivery of medicines and food,” it said.
Jonathan Gimblett, a member of Ukraine’s legal team said Russia was "resorting to tactics reminiscent of medieval siege warfare, encircling cities, cutting off escape routes and pounding the civilian population with heavy ordnance."
Ukrainian officials also said a bread factory had been hit by a Russian airstrike on Monday as the country's negotiators assembled for talks with Russian officials after previous rounds that brought no respite in the conflict.
The bodies of at least 13 civilians were recovered from rubble after a factory in the town of Makariv in the Kyiv region was hit, emergency services said. Of the 30 believed to have been there at the time, five were rescued.
Russia earlier offered Ukrainians escape routes to Russia and its close ally Belarus yesterday after weekend evacuation ceasefire attempts failed.
In the besieged southern port city of Mariupol hundreds of thousands of people remained trapped without food and water under regular bombardments.
A Ukrainian negotiator urged Russia to stop its assault on Ukraine, which the United Nations said had sent 1.7m people fleeing to Central Europe.
"In a few minutes, we will start talking to representatives of a country that seriously believes large-scale violence against civilians is an argument," Ukrainian negotiator Mykhailo Podolyak said on Twitter.
"Prove that this is not the case."
Under the Russian offer, a corridor from the capital Kyiv would lead to Russia's ally Belarus, while civilians from Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-biggest city, would be directed to Russia, according to maps published by the news agency.
"Attempts by the Ukrainian side to deceive Russia and the whole civilised world ... are useless this time," the Russian defence ministry said after announcing the "humanitarian corridors".
A spokesperson for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the Russian proposal was "completely immoral".
Russia denies deliberately targeting civilians.
It calls the campaign it launched on February 24 a "special military operation" to disarm Ukraine and remove leaders it describes as neo-Nazis.
Ukraine and its Western allies call this a transparent pretext for an invasion to conquer a nation of 44 million people.
Western nations have placed heavy sanctions on Moscow to isolate it from global commerce and are now considering banning Russian oil imports.
Oil prices spiked to their highest levels since 2008 amid the prospect of less supply from Russia, the world's biggest exporter of oil and gas.
International businesses and sports bodies have suspended ties, and wider economic disruption is likely as Russia and Ukraine are among the world's main exporters of food and industrial metals.
The general staff of Ukraine's armed forces said Russian forces were "beginning to accumulate resources for the storming of Kyiv", a city of more than three million, after days of slow progress in their main advance south from Belarus.
In Mariupol, deputy mayor Sergei Orlov said there had also been continuous air raids overnight.
Orlov told authorities were ready to evacuate 6,000 people on Saturday but the Russians had bombed 29 big municipal buses that were to transport them.
Moscow has accused the Ukrainians of blocking the planned evacuations.
Ukraine said on Monday its forces had retaken control of the town of Chuhuiv in the northeast, site of heavy fighting for days, and of the strategic Mykolayiv airport in the south, which the regional governor said was under tank fire.
Neither claim could immediately be verified.
In the capital Kyiv, soldiers and volunteers have built hundreds of checkpoints, often using sandbags, stacked tyres and spiked cables.
Some barriers looked significant, with heavy concrete slabs and sandbags piled more than two stories high, while others appeared more haphazard, with hundreds of books used to weigh down stacks of tyres.
“Every house, every street, every checkpoint, we will fight to the death if necessary,” said Mayor Vitali Klitschko.
In Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, heavy shelling slammed into apartment buildings.
“I think it struck the fourth floor under us,” Dmitry Sedorenko said from his Kharkiv hospital bed. “Immediately, everything started burning and falling apart.”
The United Nations called for safe passage to reach people cut off from lifesaving aid in Ukraine.
In a humanitarian update, it described one psychiatric hospital 60km from Kyiv running out of water and medicine with 670 people trapped inside, including bedridden patients with severe needs.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) said at least six people had been confirmed killed in nine attacks on healthcare facilities since the start of the war.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Reuters Moscow would halt operations if Ukraine ceased fighting, amended its constitution to declare neutrality, and recognised Russia's annexation of Crimea and the independence of regions held by Russian-backed separatists.
While Russia's advance in the north on Kyiv has been stalled for days with an armoured column stretching for kilometres along a highway, it has made more progress in the south, pushing east and west along the Black and Azov Sea coasts.
Moscow has acknowledged nearly 500 deaths among its soldiers, but Western countries say the true number is much higher and Ukraine says it is many thousands.
Death tolls cannot be verified, but footage widely filmed across Ukraine shows burnt-out wreckage of Russian tanks and armour and parts of Ukrainian cities reduced to rubble by Russian strikes.
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