Russian Shelling Halts Ukrainian Evacuation Effort

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kraine managed to evacuate a convoy of civilians from the besieged northeastern city of Sumy on Tuesday, but renewed Russian shelling at the city’s exit forced the effort to be halted. Local authorities said the evacuation would resume later in the day.

Russian Shelling Halts Ukrainian Evacuation Effort
© Felipe Dana/Associated Press
Russian Shelling Halts Ukrainian Evacuation Effort
Heavy fighting continued across the country, particularly in the southeastern city of Mariupol, where evacuation efforts failed for the fourth day in a row and residents have gone without power or water supply for over a week.

Combat went on around the strategic town of Izyum, eastern Ukraine, where Russian forces advanced as they attempted to encircle some of the country’s most hardened forces in the Donbas region. Ukraine continued to repel Russian attempts to break into the southeastern port city of Mykolaiv, the gateway to Odessa. Some 3,000 civilians managed to flee from the contested town of Irpin, northwest of the capital, Kyiv.

On day 13 of the Russian invasion, the toll exacted on Ukrainian civilians continued to grow. Food and other basic supplies were running short in besieged cities such as Sumy, Chernihiv and Mariupol. Some 700,000 people lacked electricity and heating across the country because of the destruction of civilian infrastructure. Ukraine’s second-largest city of Kharkiv has been hit heavily by Russian attacks, with much of its 19th-century downtown reduced to rubble.

Some two million people have fled Ukraine since Russia invaded the country on Feb. 24, the United Nations refugee agency said on Tuesday. The agency estimates that a further one million have fled their homes and become internally displaced.

Russia is holding some 300,000 civilians hostage in Mariupol, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Tuesday, and is preventing an evacuation despite agreements reached via the International Committee of the Red Cross. “War crimes are part of Russia’s deliberate strategy,” he said.

In Sumy, a regional capital of 260,000 people, Russian aerial bombardments overnight hit several residential high-rises, killing 19 adults and two children, the regional prosecutor’s office said. The regional government added that Ukrainian forces using Turkish-made drones were able to hit and destroy three Russian columns moving to attack the city.

Ukraine Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said Tuesday that, in an agreement with Russia brokered by the ICRC, civilians would be able to start leaving Sumy toward the city of Poltava in the morning, and that no combat activity would be conducted in the area until 9 p.m., offering the opportunity to resupply Sumy’s population with food and medicine.

In the late morning, civilians in Sumy started boarding evacuation buses, and the first convoy, mostly made up of foreign students, safely reached Poltava. As the second convoy was about to depart, a Russian convoy including a tank on the city’s outer ring road came close to a Ukrainian checkpoint and opened fire, said Sumy Gov. Dmytro Zhyvytski in a video message. He said the incident was isolated, and that the evacuation effort would resume, with women, children and the elderly given priority.

“This incident has confirmed that there is no 100% security in leaving the city. Decide for yourselves whether it is more dangerous to stay or to leave,” he told Sumy’s residents.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said Tuesday it had opened what it said were humanitarian corridors out of Kyiv, Chernihiv, Kharkiv and Mariupol in addition to Sumy. Ukrainian officials said that only the one out of Sumy has been coordinated by both sides, for now.


Related video: Refugee count tops 1 million; Russians besiege Ukraine ports (Associated Press)

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Refugee count tops 1 million; Russians besiege Ukraine ports
Previous agreements between Moscow and Kyiv to evacuate some 200,000 civilians from the southeastern city of Mariupol failed amid violations of the cease-fire. Mariupol has been without water and power for eight days as Russian artillery continues to pound its residential areas and as Ukrainian defenders refuse to surrender.

A third round of talks between Russia and Ukraine on how to end the war, held in Belarus on Monday, failed to achieve much progress as Kyiv refused to accept Russian demands that it recognize the 2014 annexation of the Crimean Peninsula by Russia and the independence of the Russian-created statelets in the Donbas area. Despite the Russian offensive, Ukrainian forces continued to hold most of the population areas in Donbas that they controlled before the invasion began.

“The discussion is difficult and talking about something positive is too early,” Russia’s chief negotiator, presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky, said after the talks.

The Russian and Ukrainian foreign ministers are tentatively scheduled to meet on the sidelines of an international conference in Antalya, Turkey, on Thursday.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky released a selfie video from his office in the presidential palace in Kyiv, showing the familiar cityscape outside his window and pledging no surrender. “We are all here, working where we have to be. We are all at war, making a contribution to our victory, which is inevitable,” he said. Russian state media continued reporting that Mr. Zelensky had fled the country.

Every day of continuing Ukrainian resistance creates a better negotiating position for Kyiv to end the war and guarantee the country’s peaceful future, Mr. Zelensky said.

In Izyum, eastern Ukraine, much of the city has been destroyed in the past several days by Russian bombing and artillery, said Natali Kirkach, who heads a volunteer group that has been evacuating civilians from there. “Conditions are still desperate and thousands still need to leave,” she said. The city has been without power for five days, and thousands of civilians have taken shelter at a tourist base near a monastery in the nearby town of Sviatohirsk, she said.

The Russian infantry has penetrated the northern part of Izyum up to the northern bank of the river that bisects it, Ms. Kirkach said. Bridges on the river have been blown up, and the Ukrainian army was pushing back to regain control Tuesday morning, Ukrainian officials said.

In Kharkiv, “the enemy has slowed down its offensive operations because all its attempts to enter Kharkiv are being repelled,” Gov. Oleh Synehubov said. “Our military has a high fighting spirit, and they keep receiving new weapons every day.”

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau joined British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte for talks on Ukraine in London on Monday. “We recognized the Ukrainians’ heroic efforts, and we’ll keep working together—and with others—to respond to these blatant violations of international law,” Mr. Trudeau wrote on Twitter.

Polish President Andrzej Duda, in remarks after a phone call with Mr. Zelensky, said that if Russian President Vladimir Putin believed that “by tearing down houses and killing civilians, he will break the will and spirit of the Ukrainians, he is wrong.”

Returning from a trip to the Polish-Ukrainian border, the site of continuing flows of refugees westward, Secretary of State Antony Blinken wrote on Twitter that he was “inspired by the Polish people’s welcoming of Ukrainian refugees after seeing it firsthand. The U.S. and Poland will continue to work together to respond to Russia’s aggression in Ukraine.”

Mr. Blinken spoke with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba about joint efforts to end “Putin’s war of choice.”

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz spoke Monday with Mr. Johnson, President Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron and called on Russia to end the war immediately. “It leads to dramatic human suffering,” Mr. Scholz said.