'The city is almost ruined:' Russian offensive slows as evacuations get underway
A woman holding a child cries after fleeing from Ukraine and arriving at the border crossing in Medyka, Poland,.(AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu)
- Russian shelling so relentless ‘we can’t even gather up’ the dead, says the mayor of one besieged Kyiv suburb.
- Civilians flee Ukrainian city as safe corridor opens.
- The Graphic New York Times' front page illustrates the reality of the war, the newspaper has said.
- Russian shelling of major cities is preventing civilians from evacuating.
- Russia will halt military operations 'in a moment' if Kyiv meets conditions.
Ukraine has begun evacuating civilians from the northeastern city of Sumy and from the town of Irpin near the capital Kyiv, Ukrainian officials said.
The evacuations began after Russian and Ukrainian officials agreed to establish "humanitarian corridors" to allow civilians out of some towns and cities besieged by Russian forces.
"As of 09:30 (07:30 GMT), more than 150 people have been evacuated and (evacuation) activities are underway," said Oleksiy Kuleba, governor of the Kyiv region.
It comes as Ukraine’s ministry of foreign affairs reports that 12,000 Russian personnel have been killed in its latest assessment of their losses to date.
Russia's offensive in Ukraine continued but at a significantly slower pace on Tuesday and a second senior Russian commander had been killed, Ukrainian military and intelligence said, as frightened residents fled bombed-out cities.
In the city of Irpin, on the northwest edge of Kyiv, residents ran with their young children in strollers, or cradling babies in arms, while others carried pet carriers and plastic bags and suitcases.
"It's like a disaster, the city is almost ruined, and the district where I'm living, it's like there are no houses which were not bombed," said one young mother, holding a baby beneath a blanket, while her daughter stood by her side.
The European Union's executive will propose a new mechanism to punish disinformation around the world, foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on Tuesday, citing what he said were lies intentionally spread by Russian state-owned media.
Borrell told the European Parliament that the EU should be able to freeze assets and ban travel to the bloc of those deemed responsible, in order to highlight such abuses of information to manipulate and mislead.
"I will propose a new mechanism that will allow us to sanction those malign disinformation actors," Borrell said, adding that he was not trying to define what was true or false in news, but to protect against manipulation of societies.
He singled out Russian state-owned television network Russia Today and news agency Sputnik as examples of "instruments to push this narrative to manipulate and mislead" Russian people over Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.
Borrell said Moscow was not just bombing houses and infrastructure in Ukraine but also targeting Russians with fake news and disinformation. "They are bombing their minds," he said.
The proposal comes after European Commission President Ursula von Der Leyen said the 27-member bloc will ban the channels following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Borrell did not give more details about the timing of his proposal. EU governments would have to agree, draw up legal acts and agree on the names of those to target.
Ukraine's military intelligence said on Tuesday that Ukrainian forces killed a Russian general near the besieged city of Kharkiv, the second Russian senior commander to die in the invasion.
Major General Vitaly Gerasimov, first deputy commander of Russia's 41st army, was killed on Monday, the Chief Directorate of Intelligence of Ukraine's defence ministry said in a statement.
Ukraine's general staff of the armed forces said the Russian offensive continues although at a significantly slower pace.
With the invasion well into its second week, Russian troops were making significant advances in southern Ukraine but stalled in some other regions. Soldiers and volunteers fortified the capital, Kyiv, with hundreds of checkpoints and barricades designed to thwart a takeover.
A steady rain of shells and rockets fell on other population centers, including the Kyiv suburb of Bucha, where the mayor reported heavy artillery fire.
“We can’t even gather up the bodies because the shelling from heavy weapons doesn’t stop day or night,” Mayor Anatol Fedoruk said.
Russia's invasion, the biggest attack on a European state since World War Two, has now created up to two million refugees, as well as a raft of sanctions on Moscow, and fears of wider conflict as the West pours military aid into Ukraine.
Russia calls its actions in Ukraine a "special operation" that it says is not designed to occupy territory but to destroy its southern neighbour's military capabilities and capture what it regards as dangerous nationalists.
After the third attempt to ease the bloodshed at talks in Belarus, negotiators warned not to expect the next round to bring a final result. The Russian and Ukrainian foreign ministers are expected to meet in Turkey on Thursday.
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.
Russia opened humanitarian corridors on Tuesday so that people can be evacuated from Kyiv, Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv and Mariupol, the Interfax news agency quoted the Russian defence ministry as saying.
Kremlin officials said safe corridors intended to let Ukrainian civilians escape the Russian onslaught would open Tuesday, though Ukrainian leaders greeted the plan with scepticism since prior efforts to establish evacuation routes crumbled amid renewed attacks.
The Russian UN ambassador forecast a potential cease-fire for the morning and appeared to suggest that humanitarian paths leading away from Kyiv and other cities could give people choice in where they want to go — a change from previous proposals that offered only destinations in Russia or Belarus.
Fears of an energy war between Russia and the West grew on Tuesday after the United States pushed its allies to ban Russian oil imports as punishment for Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.
Russia warned it could stop the flow of gas through pipelines from Russia to Germany in response to Berlin's decision last month to halt the opening of the controversial new Nord Stream 2 pipeline. Russia supplies 40% of Europe's gas.
The Kremlin has threatened to cut off gas supplies to Europe and warned that the price of oil could rocket to $300 a barrel if the western allies step up their economic war against Russia by banning energy imports.
"We have every right to take a matching decision and impose an embargo on gas pumping through the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline," Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said on Monday.
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