A civilian evacuation operation in Mariupol has been suspended for the third time, according to the Joint Operations Force (JFO), which complains that Russian troops are not allowing people to leave the city.
“In order to remove the citizens of Mariupol through a single route, the defenders of the city took a series of measures: the streets were cleared of mines, the mechanical barriers were removed and more. However, the occupiers did not allow children, women and the elderly to leave the city. “The enemy launched an attack just in the direction of the humanitarian corridor,” the JFO said on Facebook on Tuesday.
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Irina Verestsuk also said on television today that 30 buses were on their way to the besieged Mariupol to pick up people to be evacuated from the city via a humanitarian corridor to the Ukrainian-controlled territories.
There are indications that Russian forces are firing in the direction of a humanitarian aid route, she added, without giving further details.
At least 21 people were killed Monday in Russian airstrikes against Sumy, a town 350 km northeast of Kiev, according to a new report released by Ukrainian authorities today.
“The bodies of 21 people, including two children, were found at the site of the airstrike,” the district attorney’s office said on its Facebook page. An earlier report had said nine people had been killed.
In Sumi, however, the evacuation operation is proceeding normally with the first buses already gone.
THE Sumy Governor Dmitry Zivicki said in a videotaped statement that the first buses had already departed from Sumi for the western city of Poltava.
He added that priority is given to the disabled, pregnant women and children in orphanages.
A short video released by Presidential Adviser Kirol Tymoshenko shows a red bus with some citizens on board.
“It was agreed that the first convoy will start at 10 a.m. (local time and time of Greece) from the city of Sumi. “The convoy will be followed by the local population with private vehicles,” Deputy Prime Minister Irina Verestsuk said in a televised statement.
A humanitarian corridor to evacuate civilians, including foreign students, from Sumy to Poltava has been agreed today. We call on Russia to uphold its ceasefire commitment, to refrain from activities that endanger the lives of people and to allow the delivery of humanitarian aid. pic.twitter.com/W6ArLPKtBq
– MFA of Ukraine ???????? (@MFA_Ukraine) March 8, 2022
Russia opens “humanitarian corridors” , so that people can move away from Kyiv and 4 other Ukrainian cities, Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv (Kharkov) and Mariupol, the Russian news agency Interfax reported, citing today the announcement of the Russian Ministry of Defense.
Residents are also fleeing the city of Irpin, a suburb of Kiev on the front lines of the conflict, where Reuters reporters filmed families fleeing Sunday to save their lives from heavy bombardment. Residents ran with small children others in prams or holding babies in their arms, while others carried pets and plastic bags with their belongings.
“The city is almost devastated and in the neighborhood where I live, it ‘s as if there are no houses that have not been bombed,” said a young mother holding a baby under a blanket as her daughter stood beside her. “Yesterday was the heaviest bombing, the whole building was shaking.”
Russia’s Interfax news agency reported that Moscow was opening corridors today to allow people to leave five Ukrainian cities: Chernihiv, Kharkiv, Mariupol and the capital Kyiv, as well as Sumy. So far there are no comments from the Ukrainian side about the evacuation of these cities, except for Sumy.
Ukraine has announced that the pace at which Russian troops are advancing has slowed today. The Ukrainian Defense Ministry announced that Russian Lieutenant General Vitaly Gerasimov, the first deputy commander of the 41st Russian Army, was killed yesterday, Monday. He is the second Russian lieutenant general to be killed since the invasion began. It was not possible to contact the Russian Defense Ministry directly for comment and Reuters was unable to confirm the information.
Civilians have been trapped by clashes raging since Russian forces invaded Ukraine on February 24.
More than 10 people have been killed in Russian airstrikes in Sumy, northeastern Ukraine, local authorities say.
“In some places, apartment buildings were bombed,” complained Dmitry Zivicki, head of the regional government, in a statement he uploaded to the social networking site Facebook.
Among the 10 people killed when houses were bombed, even in central Sumi, were children, he continued.
Four Ukrainian soldiers were also killed in what Mr Zivitsky called an “unequal battle with the Russian army.”
Meanwhile, Ukrainian Infrastructure Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov estimated that the damage caused by the Russian armed forces after the invasion exceeded $ 10 billion on Sunday. He explained that he was referring mainly to the damage to infrastructure such as bridges, airports, the railway network, etc., according to the current edition of the newspaper Ukrainian Pravda. He added that the damaged infrastructure can be restored in two years and that the country is counting on international aid for its reconstruction.
At the same time, Kyiv accuses Moscow that Russian forces are preventing civilians from moving safely out of cities targeted by Russian bombing.
“We have agreed on humanitarian corridors. Did they work? “The Russian tanks, the Grands (Russian rocket launchers), the mines were in operation,” he said. Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky in his recorded message.
He also accused Russian forces of “mining the road agreed to be used to transport food and medicine” to besieged Mariupol in southern Ukraine, and of “destroying buses” to evacuate civilians from war zones.
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