Russia BREAKS ceasefire to shell evacuation routes out of besieged Mariupol

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Russia has again broken a ceasefire to shell evacuation routes out of the  besieged city of Mariupol as desperate civilians continue to flee Vladimir Putin’s onslaught.

The latest ceasefire violation came as President Volodymyr Zelensky said a child had died of thirst in the blockaded port city, which is running low on food, water and medicine amid the biggest ground war in Europe since World War II.

Late Monday, Russia named Mariupol as one of four cities where humanitarian corridors would be opened after also shelling a route out of the city on Sunday.

Yellow buses with a red cross on them were seen arriving in the city today, but reports said Moscow’s forces had once again shelled the humanitarian routes.

Ukraine foreign ministry spokesperson Oleg Nikolenko reported the shelling near Mariupol on Tuesday.

‘8 trucks + 30 buses ready to deliver humanitarian aid to Mariupol and to evac (evacuate) civilians to Zaporizhzhia. Pressure on Russia MUST step up to make it uphold its commitments,’ he urged.

Another corridor was set to opened out of Sumy in Ukraine north-east. 

Buses packed with people began a procession along a snowy road in Sumy on Tuesday, as evacuees held their breath hoping Moscow’s forces would keep their word and allow them to pass safely.

Sumy yesterday saw at least 21 civilians – including two children – killed in a Russian air strike on a residential street, the regional prosecutor’s office said in a statement on Tuesday. The bodies were recovered by emergency services early on Tuesday in searches that are ongoing, it said.

Meanwhile, the United Nations said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has forced two million people to flee the country.

Previous attempts to lead civilians to safety have crumbled with renewed attacks, with Ukraine accusing Russia of breaking ceasefire agreements by continuing to launch strikes on cities despite the evacuations. 

Zelensky has called for the expansion of the corridors for evacuees, and more support from the Red Cross.

In a video address Tuesday from an undisclosed location, he said a child died of dehydration in the blockaded southern seaport, in a sign of how desperate the city’s population has become.

He pleaded again with Western countries to provide air support, and said evacuation buses have been sent to Mariupol, but said there was no firm agreement on the route, so ‘Russian troops can simply shoot on this transport on the way.’

Zelensky accused the International Red Cross of ‘forbidding the use of its emblem on our cars,’ but did not give details.  

On Sunday, as some 200,000 civilians tried to flee the port city of Mariupol, Russian forces shelled their route. On Monday, a bridge across the Irpin River in the outskirts of Kyiv – a key evacuation route – was also destroyed. 

The route people took on Tuesday out of the eastern city of Sumy was one of five promised by the Russians to offer civilians a way to escape the fighting.

However, the corridors offered by Moscow have been dismissed by Kyiv as little more than a PR stunt because routes, most of which lead to Russia or Belarus, have come under attack by the Kremlin’s forces.

Zelensky accused Moscow of ‘cynicism’, saying its troops have laid mines across the routes and blown up buses intended to be used as transports. 

On Monday, he rejected Russian proposals to evacuate civilians into what he described as ‘occupied territory,’ and said Moscow’s forces were ‘bombing the life out of everything that is moving.’

Zelensky said 13 people died in the bombing of a bakery in Kyiv on Monday and on Sunday, 50 children with cancer had to be moved after a missile hit a paediatric hospital in the city. 

Video posted by the Ukrainian state communications agency showed people with bags boarding buses, but it was not clear how long the effort would last.

‘The Ukrainian city of Sumy was given a green corridor, the first stage of evacuation began,’ the agency tweeted. Sumy is just 30 miles from the Russian border.

But Ukraine and Russia appeared to dispute where the evacuees from Sumy were destined, with one Ukrainian official saying they would head further into Ukraine.

Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said Tuesday that both sides agreed to a cease-fire from 9am – 9pm Ukraine time (0700-1900 GMT) for the evacuation of civilians from the eastern city of Sumy.

Ms Vereshchuk, meanwhile, only said that the two sides had agreed to an evacuation of civilians from the eastern city of Sumy, toward the Ukrainian city of Poltava. Those to be evacuated include foreign students from India and China, she said.

On Monday, the UNHCR put the number of refugees fleeing Ukraine at more than 1.7 million. Filippo Grandi, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said he expected that number to rise to 2 million today.

‘I do think that we will pass the two million mark today or maybe at the latest tomorrow. So, it doesn’t stop,’ he said. 

Grandi made his remarks at a press conference, after visiting Moldova, Poland and Romania, all of which have received refugees pouring across the border from Ukraine since Russia invaded the country on February 24.

He praised the ‘exemplary’ welcome provided by these three countries, adding they seemed to be ‘coping’ with the ‘natural spontaneous distribution.’

Grandi stressed that the first waves of refugees were those with ‘some resources,’

‘Many come by car, and especially they have connections. They can go where they have family, friends, communities,’ the commissioner said.

‘It is possible that if the war continues… we will start seeing people that have no resources and no connections and that will be a more complex issue for European countries to manage going forward and there will need to be even more solidarity by everybody in Europe and beyond,’ he said.

For comparison, Grandi said the Balkan wars in Bosnia and Kosovo saw ‘maybe two to three million people, but over a period of eight years.’

While other parts of the ‘world have seen this,’ Grandi added, ‘in Europe it’s the first time since the Second World War.’

On Monday, Grandi called it ‘the fastest growing refugee crisis in Europe since World War II,’ in a post to Twitter.       

With the invasion well into its second week, Russian troops have made significant advances in southern Ukraine but stalled in some other regions.

Ukrainian 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. ‘Dogs are pulling apart the bodies on the city streets. It’s a nightmare.’

In one of the most desperate cities, the encircled southern port of Mariupol, an estimated 200,000 people – nearly half the population of 430,000 – were hoping to flee, and Red Cross officials waited to hear when a corridor would be established.

Russia’s coordination centre for humanitarian efforts in Ukraine and Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk both said a cease-fire was agreed to start Tuesday morning to allow some civilians to evacuate, but the two sides differed on where they said the corridors would be.

Russia’s coordination center suggested there would be more than one corridor, but that most would lead to Russia, either directly or through Belarus. 

At the U.N., however, the Russian ambassador suggested corridors from several cities could be opened and people could choose for themselves which direction they would take.

Vereshchuk, meanwhile, only said that the two sides had agreed to an evacuation of civilians from the eastern city of Sumy, toward the Ukrainian city of Poltava. Those to be evacuated include foreign students from India and China, she said.

She reiterated that proposals to evacuate civilians to Russia and its ally Belarus, which was a launch pad for the invasion, were unacceptable.

Demands for effective passageways have surged amid intensifying shelling by Russian forces. The steady bombardments, including in some of Ukraine’s most populated regions, have yielded a humanitarian crisis of diminishing food, water and medical supplies.

Through it all, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukrainian forces were showing unprecedented courage.

‘The problem is that for one soldier of Ukraine, we have 10 Russian soldiers, and for one Ukrainian tank, we have 50 Russian tanks,’ Zelensky told ABC News in an interview that aired Monday night. 

But he noted that the gap in strength was closing and that even if Russian forces ‘come into all our cities,’ they will be met with an insurgency.

A top U.S. official said multiple countries were discussing whether to provide the warplanes that Zelensky has been pleading for.

The besieged city of Mariupol was short on water, food and power, and cellphone networks are down. Stores have been looted as residents search for essential goods.

Police moved through the city, advising people to remain in shelters until they heard official messages broadcast over loudspeakers to evacuate.

Hospitals in Mariupol are facing severe shortages of antibiotics and painkillers, and doctors performed some emergency procedures without them.

The lack of phone service left anxious citizens approaching strangers to ask if they knew relatives living in other parts of the city and whether they were safe.

The battle for Mariupol is crucial because its capture could allow Moscow to establish a land corridor to Crimea, which Russia seized from Ukraine in 2014.

Several hundred miles west of Mariupol, Russian forces continued their offensive in Mykolaiv, opening fire on the Black Sea shipbuilding centre of a half-million people, according to Ukraine’s military. Rescuers said they were putting out fires caused by rocket attacks in residential areas.

Ukraine’s general staff of the armed forces said in a statement Tuesday that Ukrainian forces are continuing defense operations in the suburbs of the city.

The general staff said ‘demoralized’ Russian forces are engaging in looting in places they have occupied, commandeering civilian buildings like farm hangars for military equipment, and are setting up firing positions in populated areas. The claims could not be independently verified.

Ukrainian defense forces were also involved in operations in the northern city of Chernihiv and the outskirts of Kyiv, the general staff said.

In Kyiv, soldiers and volunteers have built hundreds of checkpoints to protect the city of nearly 4 million, often using sandbags, stacked tires and spiked cables.

Some barricades 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 tires.

‘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, with 1.4 million people, 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.’

When the floor collapsed beneath him, he crawled out through the third story, past the bodies of some of his neighbors.

In the small town of Horenka, where shelling reduced one area to ashes and shards of glass, rescuers and residents picked through the ruins as chickens pecked around them.

‘What are they doing?’ rescue worker Vasyl Oksak asked of the Russian attackers. ‘There were two little kids and two elderly people living here. Come in and see what they have done.’

At The Hague, Ukraine pleaded with the International Court of Justice to order a halt to Russia’s invasion, saying Moscow is committing widespread war crimes.

Russia ‘is resorting to tactics reminiscent of medieval siege warfare, encircling cities, cutting off escape routes and pounding the civilian population with heavy ordnance,’ said Jonathan Gimblett, a member of Ukraine’s legal team.

The fighting has sent energy prices surging worldwide and stocks plummeting, and threatens the food supply and livelihoods of people around the globe who rely on crops farmed in the fertile Black Sea region.

The U.N. human rights office reported 406 confirmed civilian deaths but said the real number is much higher.

On Monday, Moscow again announced a series of demands to stop the invasion, including that Ukraine recognize Crimea as part of Russia and recognize the eastern regions controlled by Moscow-supported separatist fighters as independent. 

It also insisted that Ukraine change its constitution to guarantee it won’t join international bodies like NATO and the EU. Ukraine has already rejected those demands.

Zelensky has called for more punitive measures against Russia, including a global boycott of its oil exports, which are key to its economy.

‘If (Russia) doesn’t want to abide by civilized rules, then they shouldn’t receive goods and services from civilization,’ he said in a video address.