After fighting halted renewed weekend evacuation efforts and civilian casualties mounted, Russia’s Defense Ministry announced that its military will hold fire and open humanitarian corridors in several Ukrainian cities on Monday.
Being set up at the personal request of French President Emmanuel Macron, as the Russian ministry noted, the corridors opened at 0700 GMT from Ukraine’s capital Kyiv as well as from Kharkiv, Mariupol, and Sumy.
Macron has allegedly demanded a ceasefire and the protection of civilians.
While Mariupol and Sumy corridors will lead both to other Ukrainian cities and to Russia, the published maps show that the corridor from Kyiv will lead to Belarus though residents also have an option to be airlifted to Russia, while Kharkiv’s civilians from will only have a corridor leading to Russia.
Moscow warned Kyiv not to prevent civilians from leaving, stressing that any Ukrainian attempt to deceive Russia and the whole civilized world and to shift the blame for undermining humanitarian efforts would this time be useless as Russia will monitor the evacuation by using drones.
The two previous attempts on Saturday and Sunday to set up green corridors for civilian evacuation from Mariupol have failed with both sides accusing the other of interrupting the ceasefire and shelling while Moscow accused Ukrainian nationalists of using civilians as a human shield.
According to the Ukrainian authorities, most of the Mariupol residents trapped in the city are sleeping in bomb shelters to escape near-constant shelling that has cut off food, water, power, and heating supplies.
UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi warned on Sunday that with over 1.5 million refugees from Ukraine that have crossed into neighboring countries in the space of 10 days, this is the fastest-growing refugee crisis in Europe since WW2.
According to the UN info published on Sunday, the civilian death toll since Moscow launched its military assault on Feb. 24 rose to 364 – including more than 20 children – with hundreds more injured by the use of explosive weapons with a wide impact area, including heavy artillery and multi-launch rocket systems’ shelling, missiles and airstrikes.
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