Local authorities in Ukrainian city ask residents to return to shelters and wait for further information
Ukraine
Authorities in the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol have said an evacuation of civilians has been postponed because Russian forces encircling the city were not respecting an agreed ceasefire.
In a statement, the city council asked residents to return to shelters in the city and wait for further information on evacuation.
In a televised broadcast, Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said Russia was not observing an agreed ceasefire in some areas, preventing a joint plan to allow civilians to evacuate.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, accused the Nato alliance of bending to Russian pressure and said it was not the force that Ukrainians had previously imagined. Speaking on Ukrainian television, he said he was open to talks with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, but only if they were “meaningful”.
The Russian defence ministry said its units had opened humanitarian corridors near Mariupol and Volnovakha, a much smaller city 40 miles (65km) to the north, on Saturday morning. Evacuations from Mariupol had been due to begin at 11am local time (0900 GMT).
Located on the Sea of Azov, the city of 450,000 has become the scene of growing misery amid days of shelling that has knocked out power and most phone service and raised the prospect of food and water shortages for hundreds of thousands of people in freezing weather. The city represents a potential strategic advantage for Moscow’s invasion, connecting it to the Russian forces coming from annexed Crimea, as well as to the troops in the Donbas.
In Volnovakha, the attack is still so intense that dead bodies lie uncollected, those hiding in shelters are running out of food, and about 90% of the city is damaged by bombing, local MP Dmytro Lubinets said.
Before the postponement, the Ukrainian government said the plan was to evacuate about 200,000 people from Mariupol and 15,000 from Volnovakha, and that the Red Cross would act as the ceasefire’s guarantor. An adviser to Ukraine’s interior ministry said there would be agreements on humanitarian corridors for other cities.
Turkey said the humanitarian ceasefires declared by Russia should be countrywide and lasting. The Turkish foreign minister, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, said evacuation and aid shipment corridors must be opened across the country and that it was working to evacuate its citizens in Ukraine by bus and train.
The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, was due to speak to Vladimir Putin by phone on Sunday. A spokesperson said Turkey was ready to help resolve the crisis.
Mariupol and Volnovakha are just two of many cities across Ukraine left reeling by a devastating campaign of shelling and artillery from Russian forces. The Russian defence ministry said on Saturday a broad offensive would continue elsewhere in Ukraine.
Ukraine said Russian forces are trying to encircle the capital, Kyiv, and Kharkiv, the country’s second biggest city, while attempting to set up a land bridge to Crimea.
Authorities in Sumy, about 190 miles east of Kyiv, reportedly urged residents to stay inside shelters, warning there could be fighting in the city’s streets.
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, is expected to press Washington for more help in a planned video call with the US Senate at 2.30pm GMT.
On Friday night he lashed out at Nato for ruling out a no-fly zone, saying it gave a “green light for further bombing of Ukrainian cities and villages”.
“All the people who die from this day forward will also die because of you, because of your weakness, because of your lack of unity,” the Ukrainian president said in an emotional address, in which he praised the bravery of the Ukrainian resistance.
Nato said on Friday that a no-fly zone could provoke full-fledged war in Europe with nuclear-armed Russia, causing far greater loss of life.
