LVIV, Ukraine (Reuters) – Ukrainian authorities on Wednesday again accused the Russian military of obstructing attempts to evacuate civilians from several besieged Ukrainian towns despite pledging ceasefires local people around six humanitarian corridors.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitro Kouleba has accused Russia of holding 400,000 people hostage in the port city of Mariupol in southeastern Ukraine by continuing the bombardment despite attempts to set up a humanitarian corridor to evacuate civilians.
“Russia continues to hold more than 400,000 Mariupol people hostage, preventing humanitarian aid and evacuations. The indiscriminate shelling continues,” he wrote on Twitter.
“Nearly 3,000 newborns lack medicine and food,” he added.
In Izium, in the Kharkiv region, in the east of the country, a planned evacuation of civilians was delayed by Russian bombardments, announced in a message published on the Internet the governor of the region, Oleh Sinehoubov.
“The buses are still waiting to enter the town of Izium,” he said, adding that negotiations were underway with Russian troops, with the help of the Red Cross.
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Irina Vereshchuk announced in a television address early Wednesday morning that Ukrainian and Russian forces had pledged to cease fire from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. (7 a.m. to 7 p.m. GMT) to allow the establishment of six humanitarian corridors.
While Kiev and Moscow have rejected responsibility for the failures of attempts to set up humanitarian corridors in recent days, Irina Verechchuk had urged the Russian forces to respect their commitments.
Five of the humanitarian corridors announced for Wednesday are located in eastern Ukraine (between Mariupol and Zaporizhia, Enerhodar and Zaporizhia, Sumy and Poltava, Izium and Lozova and between Volnovakha and Pokrovsk), the sixth aims to allow residents from a series of neighboring towns of Kiev to join the capital, in the north of the country.
The governor of the Sumy region in northeastern Ukraine said Wednesday morning that private cars were using a safe humanitarian corridor for the second consecutive day between the city of Sumy, near the border with Russia, and that of Poltava, a little further west.
According to local authorities, around 5,000 civilians had already been evacuated on Tuesday via this humanitarian corridor, which still seemed to be the only one open on Wednesday at midday.
Russia has repeatedly denied targeting civilians in what it describes as a “special military operation” aimed at demilitarizing and “denazifying” Ukraine.
(Report Max Hunder and Natalia Zinets, written by Alessandra Prentice; French version Myriam Rivet, told by Blandine Hnault)