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A Ukrainian official says a second attempt to evacuate civilians from a southern city under siege for a week has failed due to continued Russian shelling.
Evacuations from the port city of Mariupol were scheduled to begin at noon (9pm AEDT) during a 10am to 9pm (7pm–4am Monday AEDT) local ceasefire, Ukrainian military authorities said earlier Sunday.
Interior Ministry adviser Anton Gerashchenko said the planned evacuations along designated humanitarian corridors were halted because of an ongoing assault.
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"There can be no 'green corridors' because only the sick brain of the Russians decides when to start shooting and at whom," he said on Telegram.
A similar cease-fire planned for Mariupol and the nearby city of Volnovakha collapsed Saturday, trapping residents under more shelling and aerial bombardment by Russian forces.
Eduard Basurin, the head of the military in separatist-held Donetsk, had said safe passage corridors for residents of the besieged port city of Mariupol and the city of Volnovakha would reopen Sunday.
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Ukraine warns of 'large-scale ecological disaster' over fresh nuclear facility attack
Separately, Ukraine's national security service says Russian forces are firing rockets at a physics institute in the city of Kharkiv that contains nuclear material and a reactor.
The security service said a strike on the nuclear facility could lead to "large-scale ecological disaster."
The service said on Facebook Sunday that the Russians were firing from Grad launchers. Those missiles do not have precise targeting, raising concern that one would go astray.
Ukrainian President Voldymyr Zelenskyy 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 draw the West into the war.
"The world is strong enough to close our skies," Zelenskyy said in a video address on Sunday.
Russian President Vladimir Putin warned Saturday that Moscow would consider a third-party declaration to close Ukrainian airspace to be a hostile act.
Ukrainian refugee numbers hit 1.5 million, UN says
More than 1.5 million refugees have crossed from Ukraine into neighbouring countries since Russia invaded, the head of the United Nations' refugee agency reported Sunday.
Filippo Grandi, the UN high commissioner for refugees, wrote on Twitter that the rapid exodus represented "the fastest growing refugee crisis in Europe since World War II."
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https://twitter.com/FilippoGrandi/status/1500395166624010249
A promised cease-fire in Mariupol failed amid scenes of terror Saturday. Ukrainian officials said the evacuation was aborted because the city of 430,000 remained under attack.
Russian President Vladimir Putin blamed Ukraine for the failure and warned that the country's ongoing resistance since Russia invaded its ex-Soviet neighbour on February 24 is putting the country's future as a nation in jeopardy.
"If they continue to do what they are doing, they are calling into question the future of Ukrainian statehood," the Russian leader said Saturday.
"And if this happens, it will be entirely on their conscience."
Putin claims West 'declaring war' with sanctions
Mr Putin also hit out at Western sanctions that have crippled Russia's economy and sent the value of its currency tumbling, likening them to "declaring war."
With the Kremlin's rhetoric growing fiercer and a reprieve from fighting dissolving, Russian troops continued to shell encircled cities.
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By nighttime Saturday, Russian forces had intensified their shelling of Mariupol, while dropping powerful bombs on residential areas of Chernihiv, a city north of Kyiv, Ukrainian officials said.
Sunday's evacuations were announced along with a third round of talks between Russia and Ukraine.
Davyd Arakhamia, a member of the Ukrainian delegation, said the meeting would take place Monday. He gave no additional details, including the location of the talks.
Previous meetings held in Belarus had led to a cease-fire agreement to create humanitarian corridors for the evacuation of children, women and older people from Ukrainian cities, where pharmacies have run bare, hundreds of thousands face food and water shortages, and the injured have been succumbing to their wounds.
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'Relentless shelling' amid evacuation attempts
Mariupol mayor Vadym Boychenko said thousands of residents had gathered for safe passage out of the city on Saturday when shelling began and the evacuation was stopped. Later in the day, he said the attack had escalated.
"The city is in a very, very difficult state of siege," Cr Boychenko told Ukrainian TV.
"Relentless shelling of residential blocks is ongoing, airplanes have been dropping bombs on residential areas. The Russian occupants are using heavy artillery, including Grad multiple rocket launchers."
Plans for Sunday's evacuation called for the route from Mariupol to extend to Zaporizhzhia, a city 227km away.
Russia has made significant advances in southern Ukraine as it seeks to block access to the Sea of Avrov.
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.
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'You should take to the streets! You should fight!"
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged Ukrainians in cities taken over by the Russians to resist.
"It is a special kind of heroism — to protest when your city is occupied," Mr Zelenskyy said Saturday night in his latest video address to the nation.
"Ukrainians in all of our cities that the enemy has entered, go on the offensive! You should take to the streets! You should fight!"
Thousands of Ukrainians accepted the President's request and demonstrated on Saturday. Some climbed Russia's military vehicles and waved Ukraine's yellow and blue flag.
In the southern port city of Kherson, a city of 300,000 where Russian troops took control this week, the soldiers were reported to have fired warning shots to disperse the crowd, but the protesters were unfazed.
Russian forces also had encircled Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, Chernihiv and Sumy, as of Saturday, while Ukrainian forces had managed to keep control of key cities in central and southeastern Ukraine, Zelenskyy said.
The head of the Chernihiv region said Russia dropped powerful bombs on residential areas of the city, which has a population of 290,000. Vyacheslav Chaus posted a photo online of what he said was an undetonated FAB-500, a 500kg bomb.
"Usually this weapon is used against military-industrial facilities and fortified structures," Mr Chaus said.
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The West has broadly backed Ukraine, offering aid and weapons and slapping Russia with vast sanctions. But the fight itself has been left to Ukrainians, who have expressed a mixture of courageous resolve and despondency.
"Ukraine is bleeding," Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said in a video released Saturday, "but Ukraine has not fallen."
Mr Zelenskyy pleaded with US lawmakers Saturday for additional help, specifically fighter planes to help secure the skies over Ukraine, even as he insisted Russia was being defeated.
"We're inflicting losses on the occupants they could not see in their worst nightmare," he said.
Russian troops advanced on a third nuclear power plant, having already taken control of one of the four operating in the country and the closed plant in Chernobyl, Mr Zelenskyy told the American lawmakers Saturday.
The US Congress is considering a request for US$10 billion ($13.6 billion) in emergency funding for humanitarian aid and security needs. The UN said it would increase its humanitarian operations both inside and outside Ukraine, and the Security Council scheduled a meeting for Monday on the worsening situation.
US President Joe Biden called Mr Zelenskyy early Sunday, Kyiv time, to discuss Russia sanctions and speeding US assistance to Ukraine. The White House said the conversation also covered talks between Russia and Ukraine but did not give details.
The death toll of the conflict has been difficult to measure. The UUN human rights office said at least 351 civilians have been confirmed killed since the February 24 invasion, but the true number is probably much higher.
The US State Department updated its travel guidance Saturday and recommended that US citizens leave Russia immediately.
Ukraine's military is vastly outmatched by Russia's, but its professional and volunteer forces have fought back with fierce tenacity. Even in cities that have fallen, there were signs of resistance.
Onlookers in Chernihiv cheered as they watched a Russian military plane fall from the sky and crash, according to video released by the Ukrainian government. In Kherson, hundreds of protesters waved blue and yellow Ukrainian flags and shouted, "Go home".
A vast Russian armoured column threatening Ukraine's capital remained stalled outside Kyiv.
Source: 9News
