Shelling and evacuation efforts ongoing in Ukraine

KYIV, Ukraine

Efforts are ongoing to coordinate safe routes of escape for Ukrainian civilians out of besieged cities as the Russian invasion rounds out its second week.

In the time since Russian forces swept into the country, some 2 million people have fled Ukraine, nearly half of them children with most people fleeing to neighboring Poland. Russian troops have captured swaths of territory in the south, but have faced fierce Ukrainian resistance in other regions.

Ukrainian officials say pregnant women, women with children and others will be able to leave the city of Sumy on Wednesday through a humanitarian corridor Russia and Ukraine agreed to. Some 5,000 civilians, including many foreign students, were able to flee the city on Tuesday in buses marked with a red cross logo.

Life has become increasingly desperate in cities cut from electricity and facing food and medicine shortages. In the port city of Mariupol, which has been without water, heat, sanitary systems and phone service for several days, bodies laid uncollected in the streets.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy vowed that his country would fight Russia’s invasion in its cities, fields and riverbanks.

Civilian evacuations are expected Wednesday during a 12-hour-long window from the north-eastern border city of Sumy to the city of Poltava. Nearly two dozen buses carrying aid to the city will pick up people seeking to flee, Ukrainian officials say.

A senior Ukrainian official says 5,000 people, including 1,700 foreign students were evacuated from Sumy on Tuesday.

Ukrainian officials say they will not accept Moscow’s offer to establish safe corridors for civilians to head toward Russia, saying they will only agree to the safe exits leading westward.

Other evacuation efforts stalled or were thwarted by Russian shelling on Tuesday. The planned evacuation of civilians from Mariupol failed because Russian troops fired on a Ukrainian convoy carrying humanitarian cargo to the city on Tuesday, according to Ukraine’s deputy prime minister.

Russia insists it is ready to provide humanitarian corridors for civilians to leave five Ukrainian cities. The two sides blame one another for previous failed attempts.

Russian and Ukrainian foreign ministers are meeting in Turkey on Wednesday on the side-lines of a forum.

In the encircled port city of Mariupol, women and children gathered in a basement shelter as outgoing artillery fire blazed in the distance. A Ukrainian soldier is seen telling people to remain united as a store is raided for essential items. “You don’t need to panic. Please don’t steal everything. You will live here together. This is your home,” he’s heard saying.

In the capital, Kyiv, families with small children continue to seek refuge inside a subway station to escape chaos and the sounds of war above. One university student told the AP that people go home from time to time to shower and get food only.

Russian artillery has pounded the outskirts of Kyiv for days, destroying homes and other buildings.

Ukrainian officials say two people, including a child, were killed by Russian firepower in the town of Chuhuiv just east of the country’s second largest city of Kharkiv late Tuesday.

In the city of Malyn, to the west of Kyiv, at least five people, including two children, were killed in a Russian air strike, according to Ukrainian officials.

Ukrainian officials say Russian shelling made it impossible to evacuate the bodies of five people who died when their vehicle was fired upon near Kyiv and the bodies of 12 patients of a psychiatric hospital there, where around 200 patients remain without food and medicine.

In the northern city of Chernihiv, Russian forces are placing military equipment among residential buildings, a top Ukrainian military official said. He said Russians dressed in civilian clothes are advancing on the city of Mykolaiv in the south.

Ukraine’s energy minister says Ukrainian staff at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, the largest in Europe, are physically and emotionally exhausted. He said about 500 Russian soldiers and 50 pieces of heavy equipment are inside the station, which the Russians took control of in an attack last week.

Increasingly isolated, Russia has cracked down on independent reporting and blocked access to Russian-language journalism by multiple foreign news outlets. Scattered protests against the war continue in the country, but sources of information about what is happening are diminishing for Russian audiences.

U.S. President Joe Biden said Tuesday the U.S. would ban all Russian oil imports, even if it will mean rising costs for Americans, particularly at the gas pump. Shell also said it will stop buying Russian oil.

McDonald’s, Starbucks, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and General Electric all announced Tuesday they’re temporarily suspending business in Russia. Some companies, such as McDonald’s, say they will keep paying wages for now to their workers in Russia.

Russia’s Central Bank sharply tightened currency restrictions in ways not seen since Soviet times. It ordered the country’s commercial banks to cap the amount clients can withdraw from their hard currency deposits at $10,000 in U.S. dollars. Any withdrawals above that amount would be converted to rubles at the current exchange rates.

A senior Russian diplomat overseeing North American issues at the Foreign Ministry slammed U.S. actions against Russia, saying it had brought relations between the two nations “to the point of no return”.

CIA Director William Burns testified before Congress Monday, saying some 13,000-14,000 Russians have been arrested since the start of the invasion for opposing the war and that it will be “an ugly next few weeks” as Putin doubles down in Ukraine.