Two million people — half of them children — have fled Ukraine in the less than two weeks since Russia invaded the country, officials said Tuesday, as Europe’s worst refugee crisis since World War II grows by the day.
The humanitarian situation in the country’s besieged cities grew more dire, including in Mariupol, where bodies lay uncollected in the streets and hopes for a mass-evacuation of civilians were dashed again.
Several thousand people did manage to leave the northeastern Ukrainian city of Sumy on buses Tuesday through one of the humanitarian corridors Russia and Ukraine agreed to Monday. But overnight shelling killed 21 people in the city, according to the Ukrainian officials, as fierce fighting raged in a huge swath of the country.
Videos showed people boarding buses in Sumy on Tuesday and showed buses marked with a red cross driving along a snowy road as they headed out of the city.
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said both sides agreed to a cease-fire from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. for the evacuation of Sumy civilians, who were headed southwest to the Ukrainian city of Poltava.
Earlier, a video from Sumy showed rescuers pulling the wounded out of debris following an overnight airstrike. A woman who was trapped under the rubble survived, according to the Ukrainian Interior Ministry.
Women and children in Mariupol gathered in a basement shelter as outgoing artillery fire blazed in the distance. One of the women, Goma Janna, lamented, “Why shouldn’t I cry? I want my home, I want my job. I’m so sad about people and about the city, the children.”
Civilians in Mariupol, a city of roughly 430,000 people, have been without water, heat, sanitary systems and phone service for several days, and many have turned to breaking into shops. The video showed a Ukrainian soldier telling people, “People, please be united. You don’t need to panic. Please don’t steal everything. You will live here together.”
HOW ARE EVACTUATIONS GOING?
Vereshchuk said 5,000 people were evacuated from Sumy to Poltava, including 1,700 foreign students.
The Russian military gave a different number, saying 723 people were evacuated from the city and identifying them as mostly citizens of India, with the rest from China, Jordan and Tunisia. It made no mention of Ukrainians among the evacuees.
The planned evacuation of civilians from Mariupol failed because Russian troops fired on a Ukrainian convoy carrying humanitarian cargo to the city that was later going to ferry people out, Vereshchuk said.
The Russian military denied firing on convoys and accused Ukraine of blocking the evacuation effort.
Russia said Monday that civilians would be allowed safe passage out of several cities, including Sumy, Mariupol, Chernigiv, Kyiv and Kharkiv. But it wasn’t clear if evacuations happened in those other cities. Repeated attempts to create safe evacuation corridors have failed since last weekend amid continuing fighting and objections to the proposed routes.
Ukrainian officials said a safe corridor did open early Tuesday from Irpin, a city near Kyiv that has been without electricity, water and heat for days. But it wasn’t clear how long it remained open or how many people used it.
WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING ON THE GROUND?
Russian aircraft on Tuesday night bombed residential areas around Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, and Zhytomyr, to the west of Kyiv, and its military also stepped up its shelling of Kyiv’s suburbs, the Ukrainian emergency services said.
In Malyn, a town of 25,000 near Zhytomyr, the bombing killed at least five people, including two children, and destroyed a textile factory and seven homes, the agency said. Two people died, including a 7-year-old, in the bombing in Chuhuiv, near Kharkiv.
Ukrainian officials also reported dire conditions in the Kyiv suburbs of Bucha, Hostomel, Irpen, Vyshhorod and Borodianka, including bodies of the dead that couldn’t be buried.
Mayor of Lviv said the city in far western Ukraine was struggling to feed and house the more than 200,000 people who have fled there. The displaced are being housed in the city’s sport halls, schools and other buildings.
In the nearly two weeks since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the invasion, his forces have captured a swath of southern and coastal Ukraine but have seen their advances stopped in many areas, including around Kyiv.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy vowed that his country would fight Russia’s invasion in its cities, fields and riverbanks.
“We will not give up and we will not lose,” he told Britain’s packed House of Commons via video, evoking the “never surrender” speech that Winston Churchill gave during World War II.
HOW MANY PEOPLE HAVE BEEN KILLED?
Thousands of people are thought to have been killed, both civilians and soldiers, though the actual number is unknown.
The U.S. believes Russia underestimated the strength of Ukraine’s resistance before launching its invasion and has suffered thousands of casualties, the Biden administration’s top intelligence official told lawmakers Tuesday.
“We assess Putin feels aggrieved the West does not give him proper deference and perceives this as a war he cannot afford to lose,” Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said during a House Intelligence Committee hearing. “But what he might be willing to accept as a victory may change over time given the significant costs he is incurring.”
The U.N. human rights office said Tuesday that it had confirmed that 474 civilians had died and 861 had been wounded in Ukraine since the Feb. 24 start of the war, though it acknowledged that the actual figures are likely much higher. U.N. officials also said Tuesday that 2 million people have fled Ukraine.
WHAT ABOUT AID TO UKRAINE AND SANCTIONS AGAINST RUSSIA?
The U.S. and its NATO allies have rejected Ukraine’s calls to enforce a no-fly zone over the country so as to avoid direct military engagement with Russia. Poland said Tuesday that it would give all of its MiG-29 fighter jets to the U.S., which Ukrainian pilots are trained to fly. But the Pentagon responded that Poland’s offer to give the jets to the U.S. so they can be passed to Ukraine is not tenable and raises serious concerns for the NATO alliance.
Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby said the U.S. will continue to talk to Poland about the matter.
Meanwhile, U.S. President Joe Biden said the U.S. would ban all Russian oil imports, even if it will mean rising costs for Americans, particularly at the gas pump. Energy exports have kept a steady stream of cash flowing to Russia despite otherwise severe restrictions it faces.
Russia’s Central Bank sharply tightened currency restrictions in ways not seen since Soviet times. It ordered the country’s commercial banks to cap the amount clients can withdraw from their hard currency deposits at $10,000 in U.S. dollars. Any withdrawals above that amount would be converted to rubles at the current exchange rates.
Surging prices for oil and other vital commodities, such as wheat used in government-subsidized bread and noodles, are rattling global markets. Worries are growing that the invasion of Ukraine will upend already tight oil supplies, as Russia is one of the world’s largest energy producers.
McDonald’s, Starbucks, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and General Electric all announced Tuesday they’re temporarily suspending their business in Russia in response to the country’s invasion of Ukraine. McDonald’s said it would temporarily shutter its 850 restaurants in the country but continue paying its 62,000 workers there, at least for now.
Shell said Tuesday it will stop buying Russian oil after Ukrainian officials criticized the energy giant for buying a shipment of crude from Moscow.
AP
