Second Attempt to Evacuate Civilians too Failed, Third Round of Talks on Monday

Manas Dasgupta

NEW DELHI, March 6: Russia and Ukraine blamed each other on Sunday for the second failure of forming a humanitarian corridor during a ceasefire for safe evacuation of the civilians from the port town of Mariupol in eastern Ukraine after the first offer of ceasefire had ended in a fiasco on Saturday. The strategic city on the Azov Sea has been under siege and without electricity, food and water for days ever since Russian forces entered Ukraine about 10 days ago.

The evacuation of around 400,000 residents trapped by encircling Russian forces — attempted under a temporary ceasefire was supposed to begin on Sunday but could not. The Ukraine 24 television showed a Ukrainian National Guard member saying on television that Russians continued shelling safe areas of the city. The media reports cited an official of the Donetsk separatist administration, who accused the Ukrainian forces of failing to observe the limited ceasefire. Only about 300 people have left the city, he said. A similar plan had to be abandoned on Saturday after the ceasefire failed, with both sides trading charges.

The ceasefire offer has come even as the Russian president Vladimir Putin warned that military operations in Ukraine would stop only if Russia’s demands were met. Amidst continuous pressing by the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky for the NATO group to declare Ukraine a no-fly zone, Putin declared that any third party declaration of no-fly zone of the Ukrainian sky would be deemed by Russia as its participation in war. He has already likened western world economic sanctions as “declaring war” against Russia.

With the third round of talks between the two warring nations scheduled to be held on Monday, Russia and Ukraine announced after blaming each other for the failure of the evacuation operation on Saturday, declared another ceasefire on Sunday, they called it a “regime of silence,” and opening humanitarian corridors for civilians to leave the cities of Mariupol on the Sea of Azov, and Volnovakha to its north in the Donetsk oblast of Ukraine.

The Pro-Russian separatists and Ukraine’s National Guard accused each other of failing to establish a humanitarian corridor to allow civilians to leave on Saturday. However, the number of fleeing from Ukraine after Russia’s invasion has topped 1.5 million, making it Europe’s “fastest-growing refugee crisis” since World War-II, the United Nations said on Sunday.

By night-time Saturday, Russian forces had intensified their shelling of Mariupol, while dropping powerful bombs on residential areas of Chernihiv, a city north of Kyiv, Ukrainian officials said. Sunday’s evacuations were announced along with a third round of talks between Russia and Ukraine. Davyd Arakhamia, a member of the Ukrainian delegation, said the meeting would take place Monday. He gave no additional details, including the location of the talks.

Previous meetings held in Belarus had led to a ceasefire agreement to create humanitarian corridors for the evacuation of children, women and older people from Ukrainian cities, where pharmacies have run bare, hundreds of thousands face food and water shortages, and the injured have been succumbing to their wounds.

Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boychenko said thousands of residents had gathered for safe passage out of the city of 4,30,000 on Saturday when shelling began and the evacuation was stopped. Later in the day, he said the attack had escalated further. “The city is in a very, very difficult state of siege,” Boychenko said. “Relentless shelling of residential blocks is ongoing, airplanes have been dropping bombs on residential areas. The Russian occupants are using heavy artillery, including Grad multiple rocket launchers.” Plans for Sunday’s evacuation called for the route from Mariupol to extend to Zaporizhzhia, a city 227 kilometres away.

Russia has made significant advances in the south, seeking to cut off Ukraine’s access to the Sea of Avrov in the south. Capturing Mariupol could allow Russia to establish a land corridor to Crimea, which it annexed in 2014.

The Ukrainian armed forces’ general staff claimed on Sunday that more than 11,000 Russian troops have been killed since Moscow launched an invasion of Ukraine on February 24. A day earlier, it put Russian casualties at over 10,000. It did not report Ukrainian casualties.

The Ukrainian military said it was engaged in “fierce battles” for the control of borders at the southern city of Mykolaiv and the Chernihiv in the north. “The main efforts are focused on defending Mariupol,” it said, adding that an operation by Ukrainian forces is in progress in the eastern part of Donetsk.

Russian forces have been inching closer to the Kyiv. At Bilogordoka on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukrainian troops have planted explosives on what they say is the last intact bridge standing in the way of Russian forces.

The British military intelligence has said Russia is targeting populated areas — including Kharkiv, Chernihiv and Mariupol — in retaliation against the Ukrainian army’s resistance which has come as a “surprise”. “Russia used similar tactics in Chechnya in 1999 and Syria in 2016,” the MI said. Russia has repeatedly denied that it was targeting civilian areas.

But as a fallout of the sanctions imposed by the western world, rationing of essential foodstuff has started in Russia as sanctions have started pinching. Russia said caps were imposed to stop hoarding and black-marketing. Essential goods, whose prices are subject to state controls, include bread, rice, flour, eggs and selected meats and dairy products.

Major corporations across a range of industries have halted business in Russia since the invasion, including US-based tech firms such as Intel and Airbnb to French luxury giants LVMH, Hermes and Chanel. Visa and Mastercard had already announced that they were complying with US and international sanctions imposed on Russia in the wake of its attack.

Earlier on Sunday, Putin threatened the existence of Ukrainian statehood, saying “The current (Ukrainian) authorities must understand that if they continue to do what they are doing, they are putting in question the future of Ukrainian statehood.” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogans office said he appealed for an urgent general ceasefire in Ukraine during his conversation with Vladimir Putin. The two leaders spoke several days ahead of a diplomatic forum in Antalya on March 11-13.

As frantic, top-level diplomatic talks continued, Zelensky announced that he spoke on phone with his US counterpart Joe Biden to discuss financial support and sanctions against Russia. The American legislators promised an additional $10 billion aid package, but the White House has so far ruled out an oil ban, fearing it would ratchet up prices and hurt US consumers already stung by record inflation.

Zelensky also appealed directly to Russians on Sunday to take to the streets in protest against the Kremlin’s invasion of his country or risk their own poverty and repression. Since last week, thousands of people in Russia have been detained for protesting against the invasion of Ukraine or what the Russian authorities call a “special military operation” that began on Feb 24.

“Citizens of Russia! For you, this is a struggle not only for peace in Ukraine! This is a fight for your country,” Zelensky said in a televised address, switching from Ukrainian to Russian. “If you keep silent now, only your poverty will speak for you later. And only repression will answer,” he said. More than 1,000 detained at protests against Russian military operation in Ukraine, media reports said.

Zelensky then urged Ukrainians in cities taken over by the Russian forces to resist. “It is a special kind of heroism — to protest when your city is occupied,” Zelensky said Saturday night in his latest video address to the nation. “Ukrainians in all of our cities that the enemy has entered, go on the offensive! You should take to the streets! You should fight!” Thousands of Ukrainians accepted the president’s request and demonstrated on Saturday. Some climbed Russia’s military vehicles and waved Ukraine’s yellow and blue flag.

In the southern port city of Kherson, a city of 300,000 where Russian troops took control this week, the soldiers were reported to have fired warning shots to disperse the crowd, but the protesters were unfazed. Russian forces also had encircled Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, Chernihiv and Sumy, as of Saturday, while Ukrainian forces had managed to keep control of key cities in central and south-eastern Ukraine, Zelensky said.

The head of the Chernihiv region said Russia dropped powerful bombs on residential areas of the city, which has a population of 290,000. Vyacheslav Chaus posted a photo online of what he said was an undetonated FAB-500, a 1,100-pound (500-kilogram) bomb. “Usually this weapon is used against military-industrial facilities and fortified structures,” Chaus said.

The West has broadly backed Ukraine, offering aid and weapons and slapping Russia with vast sanctions. But the fight itself has been left to Ukrainians, who have expressed a mixture of courageous resolve and despondency. “Ukraine is bleeding,” Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said in a video released Saturday, “but Ukraine has not fallen.” Zelensky pleaded with U.S. lawmakers Saturday for additional help, specifically fighter planes to help secure the skies over Ukraine, even as he insisted Russia was being defeated.

“We’re inflicting losses on the occupants they could not see in their worst nightmare,” Zelensky said. Russian troops advanced on a third nuclear power plant, having already taken control of one of the four operating in the country and the closed plant in Chernobyl, Zelensky told the American lawmakers Saturday. Putin, however, has claimed that the operation was going according to plan and to schedule, and that he hoped Ukrainian negotiators would take a more constructive approach at talks and take into account the reality on the ground, the Kremlin said in statement.