Civilian safe passage from Ukraine's Mariupol 'halted': ICRC
KYIV / MARIUPOL
Civilian safe passage from Ukraine's besieged eastern port city of Mariupol was "halted" on March 6 for a second consecutive day, the International Committee of the Red Cross said.
"Amid devastating scenes of human suffering in Mariupol, a second attempt today to start evacuating an estimated 200,000 people out of the city came to a halt," the ICRC said.
"The failed attempts yesterday and today underscore the absence of a detailed and functioning agreement between the parties to the conflict," it added.
"Amid devastating scenes of human suffering in Mariupol, a second attempt today to start evacuating an estimated 200,000 people out of the city came to a halt," the ICRC said.
"The failed attempts yesterday and today underscore the absence of a detailed and functioning agreement between the parties to the conflict," it added.
"The ICRC is not and cannot in any way be the guarantor of a ceasefire agreement between the parties or of its implementation," the body added, criticizing the lack of a proper agreement between the warring parties to protect civilian lives amid ceasefire violations.
"For the safe passage of civilians to happen with the required levels of trust, the parties should agree between themselves not just in principle but also on the details and parameters" of an evacuation accord, the ICRC added, stressing its neutrality.
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky warned on March 6 that Russian forces are preparing to shell Odessa, a historic port city on the Black Sea coast.
"They are preparing to bomb Odessa. Odessa!" he said in a video address. "Russians have always come to Odessa. They have always felt only warmth in Odessa. Only sincerity. And now what? Bombs against Odessa? Artillery against Odessa? Missiles against Odessa?" he added. "It will be a war crime. It will be a historical crime."
Russian forces have made progress in southern Ukraine since their Feb. 24 invasion, overrunning the city of Kherson and besieging the port of Mariupol, but Odessa has so far been largely spared.
Almost a million people live in Odessa, a cosmopolitan harbor on Ukraine's southern coast with both Ukrainian and Russian speakers and Bulgarian and Jewish minorities.
The Russian advance from occupied Crimea has in part turned east to link up with Russian-backed separatists and to seize the Azov Sea port of Mariupol. But another part of the force has also headed west to Kherson, on the road towards Odessa. The city is also close to the Moldovan border and the Russian-occupied region of Transnistria.
The number of Ukrainians forced from their country grew to 1.4 million and the Kremlin’s rhetoric grew, with Russian President Vladimir Putin warning that Ukrainian statehood is in jeopardy. He likened the West’s sanctions on Russia to “declaring war.”
A pro-Russian official said safe-passage corridors would open again for residents of Mariupol on March 6, a day after a promised cease-fire in the besieged port city collapsed.
Ukrainian officials said Russian artillery fire and airstrikes had prevented residents from leaving before the agreed-to evacuations got underway. Putin accused Ukraine of sabotaging the effort.
Eduard Basurin, the head of the military in separatist-held Donetsk territory, said safe passage corridors for residents would also be opened for residents of Volnovakha. He made the comments on Russian state television.
In Mariupol, Associate Press journalists witnessed doctors make unsuccessful attempts to save the lives of wounded children, pharmacies ran bare and hundreds of thousands of people faced food and water shortages in freezing weather.
Russian forces launched hundreds of missiles and artillery attacks across the country, including dropping powerful bombs on residential areas of Chernihiv, a city north of the capital of Kyiv, Ukrainian officials said. But a miles-long Russian armored column threatening the capital was still stalled outside Kyiv.
Zelenskyy said Ukrainian forces were holding key cities in the central and southeastern part of the country, while the Russians were trying to block and keep encircled Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, Chernihiv and Sumy.
Ukrainian forces were defending Odesa, Ukraine’s biggest port city, from Russian ships, Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovich said.
In Irpin, near Kyiv, a sea of people on foot and even in wheelbarrows trudged over the remains of a destroyed bridge to cross a river and leave the city. Assisted by Ukrainian soldiers, they lugged pets, infants, purses and flimsy bags stuffed with minimal possessions. Some of the weak and elderly were carried along the path in blankets and carts.
Kyiv’s central train station remained crowded with people desperate to leave, and frequent shelling could be heard from the center of the capital city.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in Moldova pledging America’s support to the small Western-leaning former Soviet republic. The country is coping with an influx of refugees from Ukraine and keeping an eye on Russia’s intensifying war with its neighbor.
A third round of talks between Russia and Ukraine will take place on March 7, according to Davyd Arakhamia, a member of the Ukrainian delegation.
Meanwhile, Israel’s prime minister returned on March 6 from a trip to Russia where he met Putin and discussed the war.
Naftali Bennett flew to Moscow on March 5, where he met the Russian leader for three hours. Bennett spoke to Zelenskyy after his meeting with Putin.
Bennett’s trip was the latest attempt at diplomacy in the Russia-Ukraine crisis. Israel is one of the few countries that has good working relations with both Russia and Ukraine.
The U.N. World Food Program says millions of people inside Ukraine, a major global wheat supplier, will need food aid “immediately.”
Ukrainian refugees continued to pour into neighboring countries, including Poland, Romania and Moldova. The number of people who have left Ukraine since fighting began has now reached 1.45 million.