KOSICE, Slovakia (Reuters) – Ukrainian authorities have again been unable to evacuate civilians from the southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol, Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said on Tuesday. describing as “catastrophic” the humanitarian situation in the city besieged by the Russian army.
During a television press briefing, she stressed that Moscow’s proposal to set up humanitarian corridors from Mariupol to Russia or Belarus was unacceptable.
Iryna Verechchuk also indicated that 5,000 civilians had been evacuated on Tuesday from the Sumy region in the north of the country.
Earlier in the day, the governor of the region announced the evacuation of nearly 3,500 people from Sumy during a generally respected temporary truce.
Among them were around 1,700 foreign students from the local university, Dimitro Zhyvytsky said in a television interview, adding that only one truce violation had occurred during the day – a shooting near a checkpoint.
(Report Max Hunder; French version Jean Terzian)