LVIV, Ukraine
Russia announced a ceasefire
starting Monday morning and the opening of humanitarian corridors in several
areas, a day after hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian civilians attempting to
flee to safety were forced to shelter from Russian shelling that pummeled cities in Ukraine’s center, north and south.People cross an improvised path under a destroyed bridge while fleeing the town of Irpin, Ukraine, Sunday, March 6, 2022.
As Ukraine officials described
a “catastrophic” situation during failed evacuation efforts in Kyiv’s suburbs,
officials from both sides also planned a third round of talks Monday.
A Russian task force said a
ceasefire would start Monday morning, the 12th day of the war, for civilians
from the capital Kyiv, the southern port city of Mariupol, Kharkiv, Ukraine’s
second-largest city, and Sumy. It wasn’t immediately clear if fighting would
stop stop beyond the areas mentioned in the task force’s statement, or when the
ceasefire would end.
The announcement follows two
failed attempts to evacuate civilians from Mariupol, from which the
International Committee of the Red Cross estimated 200,000 people were trying
to flee. Russia and Ukraine have traded blame for the failure. The Russian task
force said Monday’s ceasefire and the opening of the corridors was announced at
the request of French President Emmanuel Macron, who spoke to Russian President
Vladimir Putin on Sunday.
Evacuation routes published by
Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency, citing the Defense Ministry, show that
civilians will be able to leave to Russia and Belarus. Russian forces will be
observing the ceasefire with drones, the task force said.
The earlier breakdown of
evacuations came as Ukraine officials said that Russian shelling intensified
across the country.
“Instead of humanitarian
corridors, they can only make bloody ones,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr
Zelenskyy said Sunday. “Today a family was killed in Irpin. Man, woman and two
children. Right on the road. As in a shooting gallery.”A factory and a store are burning after been bombarded in Irpin, in the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Sunday, March 6, 2022.
Putin said Moscow’s attacks
could be halted “only if Kyiv ceases hostilities.” As he has often done, Putin
blamed Ukraine for the war, telling Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on
Sunday that Kyiv needed to stop all hostilities and fulfill “the well-known
demands of Russia.”
Putin launched his invasion
with a string of false accusations against Kyiv, including that it is led by
neo-Nazis intent on undermining Russia with the development of nuclear weapons.
As Russian attacks worsened, a
brief reprieve from fighting in Mariupol collapsed. Heavy artillery hit
residential areas in other large cities, local officials reported.
“There can be no ‘green
corridors’ because only the sick brain of the Russians decides when to start
shooting and at whom.” Ukraine Interior Ministry adviser Anton Gerashchenko
said on Telegram.
On what is known as
Forgiveness Sunday in Orthodox Christianity, Zelenskyy said Ukraine will never
forgive the shelling of its homes, the killing of unarmed people and the
destruction of its infrastructure.
“And God will not forgive,
either today or tomorrow — never. And instead of a day of forgiveness, there
will be a judgment day. Of this I am sure,” he said in a video address.
The death toll remains
unclear. The U.N. says it has confirmed just a few hundred civilian deaths but
also warned that the number is a vast undercount.
Presidential adviser Oleksiy
Arestovich described a “catastrophic” situation in the Kyiv suburbs of Bucha,
Hostomel and Irpin, where efforts to evacuate residents on Sunday failed. About
eight civilians, including a family, were killed by Russian shelling in Irpin,
according to Mayor Oleksander Markyshin.
Video footage showed a shell
slamming into a city street, not far from a bridge used by people fleeing the
fighting. A group of fighters could be seen trying to help the family.
Arestovich said the government was doing all it could to resume evacuations.
“This is likely to represent
an effort to break Ukrainian morale,” the U.K. Ministry of Defense said of
Russian tactics as the war entered its 12th day Monday. Fighting has caused 1.5
million people to flee the country, which the head of the U.N. refugee agency
called “the fastest-growing refugee crisis in Europe since World War II.”
British military officials
compared Russia’s tactics to those Moscow used in Chechnya and Syria, where
surrounded cities were pulverized by airstrikes and artillery.
Food, water, medicine and
almost all other supplies were in desperately short supply in Mariupol, where
Russian and Ukrainian forces had agreed to an 11-hour cease-fire that would
allow civilians and the wounded to be evacuated. But Russian attacks quickly
closed the humanitarian corridor, Ukrainian officials said.
The handful of residents who managed to flee the city before the humanitarian corridor closed said the city of 430,000 had been devastated.
“We saw everything: houses
burning, all the people sitting in basements,” said Yelena Zamay, who fled to
one of the self-proclaimed republics in eastern Ukraine held by pro-Russian
separatists. “No communication, no water, no gas, no light, no water. There was
nothing.”
Russia has made significant
advances in southern Ukraine as it seeks to block access to the Sea of Azov.
Capturing Mariupol could allow Moscow to establish a land corridor to Crimea,
which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014 in a move that most other countries
considered illegal.
But much of the Russian
advance has become stalled, including an immense military convoy that has been
almost motionless for days north of Kyiv.
A senior US defense official
said Sunday that the U.S. assesses that about 95% of the Russian forces that
had been arrayed around Ukraine are now inside the country. The official, who
spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss military assessments, said Russian
forces continue to advance in an attempt to isolate Kyiv, Kharkhiv and
Chernihiv, but are being met with strong Ukrainian resistance.
Ukraine’s professional and
volunteer fighters have fought with great tenacity, though they are greatly
outmatched by the Russian army. Volunteers lined up Saturday in Kyiv to join
the military. Ukraine is also planning to fill an international legion with
20,000 volunteers from dozens of countries, though it was not clear how many
were in Ukraine.
“The whole world today is on
Ukraine’s side, not only in words but in deeds,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister
Dmytro Kuleba said on Ukrainian television Sunday night.
The West has broadly backed
Ukraine, offering aid and weapon shipments and slapping Russia with vast
sanctions. But no NATO troops have been sent to Ukraine.
Zelenskyy has also heaped
criticism on Western leaders for not responding with more force to Russia. He
reiterated a request for foreign protectors to impose a no-fly zone over
Ukraine, which NATO so far has ruled out because of concerns such an action
would lead to a far wider war.
Zelenskyy also asked the
United States and NATO countries to send more warplanes to Ukraine. But that
idea is complicated by questions about how to provide aircraft to Ukrainian
pilots.
He later urged the West to
tighten its sanctions on Russia, saying that “the audacity of the aggressor is
a clear signal” that existing sanctions are not enough.
Russia has become increasingly
isolated in the days since the invasion began, closing itself off to outside
sources of information as sanctions bite deeply into its economy. The ruble has
plunged in value, and dozens of multinational companies ended or dramatically
scaled back their work in the country.
On Sunday, American Express
announced it would suspend operations in Russia, as well as in Russian-allied
Belarus. Also, two of the so-called Big Four accounting firms, KPMG and
PricewaterhouseCoopers, said Sunday they would end their relationships with
their Russia-based member firms.
TikTok announced Sunday
Russian users would not be able to post new videos or see videos shared from
elsewhere in the world. The company blamed Moscow’s new “fake news” law, which
makes it illegal, among other things, to describe the fighting as an invasion.
Netflix also cut its service to Russia but provided no details.
Facebook and Twitter have
already been blocked in Russia, along with access to the websites of a number
of major international media outlets. TikTok is part of the Chinese tech
company ByteDance.
U.S. House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi said Congress is exploring how to further isolate Russia from the global
economy, including banning the import of its oil and energy products into the
United States. Pelosi said in a letter to Democrats released late Sunday that the
legislation under consideration would also repeal normal trade relations with
Russia and Belarus and begin the process of denying Russia access to the World
Trade Organization. - AP
No comments:
Post a Comment