Civilians trapped in Mariupol as the siege around Kiev tightens

The civilian population was still trapped on Sunday in the coastal city of Mariúpol (south of Ukraine), after the second failure of the evacuation operation, while the Russian siege tightens in the Kiev region, forcing its inhabitants to flee.

On the eleventh day since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, “the second attempt to start evacuating about 200,000 people” of the Ukrainian port of Mariupol “was interrupted between devastating scenes of human suffering”, announced the Red Cross on Sunday.

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“The column to evacuate the civilian population did not leave Mariupol because the Russians regrouped their forces and began to bombard the city”, the governor of the region, Pavlo Kirilenko, stated on Facebook.

The Russian President, Vladimir Putinaccused the “Ukrainian nationalists” of the failure of the evacuation, who would also have prevented the previous one, on Saturday, according to the Russian leader.

A Ukrainian military officer and a civilian carry a man injured in shelling at a hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine, Thursday, March 3, 2022. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)

In a telephone interview with his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, Putin denied that his armytarget civilians.”

Putin said you will getits objectives” on Ukraine “by negotiation or by war”, in a telephone conversation lasting one hour 45 minutes with Macron, who saw the Russian leader “very determined”, reported the French presidency.

Mariupol – a strategic port on the Sea of ​​Azov – has been under intense Russian siege for several days, without electricity. Its mayor, Vadim Boitchenko, indicated in an interview posted on YouTube that “Mariupol no longer exists” and that there are thousands of wounded.

The fall of this port would mark a turning point in the war because it would allow Russia unite troops advancing from the Crimean peninsula – annexed by Moscow in 2014 – with forces penetrating the country from Donbas in the east.

Meanwhile the president of UkraineVolodimir Zelenski, denounced that the Russian troops are preparing to bomb Odessa, the main port of Ukrainewhere about a million people live.

A hospital window glass is shattered by shelling in Mariupol, Ukraine, Thursday, March 3, 2022. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)

Zelenski also reported that the Russians destroyed the Vinnytsia airport, in the center of the country.

The Russian Ministry of Defense announced that it had destroyed the Starokonstantinov military airfield, 130 kilometers northeast of Kiev.

Since on March 4 the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant in the south – the largest in Ukraine and Europe – was attacked, fear of a catastrophe has spread among Western countries, and the Ukrainian authorities warned the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that the plant was controlled by Russian forces.

According to the Ukrainian authorities, the only way to communicate with the center is by mobile phone, with poor quality connections, for which the director general of that UN agency, Rafael Grossi, declared “deeply concerned” for him “deterioration of the situation of vital communications between the regulatory authority and the central”.

People lie on the floor of a hospital during the shelling by Russian forces in Mariupol, Ukraine, on Friday, March 4, 2022. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)

“There were bodies everywhere”

In Kiev, working-class suburbs like Bucha and Irpin are already in the line of fire, and the latest airstrikes convinced many residents it was time to flee.

“They are bombing residential areas, schools, churches, buildings, everything”, the accountant Natalia Didenko lamented.

In Bilohorodka, just outside the capital, Ukrainian troops planted explosives on the last remaining bridge to stop the Russian offensive.

“This is the last bridge, we are going to defend it and we are not going to let them reach Kiev”, said a fighter who identified himself as “casper”.

In Chernigov, a town near the border with Belarus and Russiadozens of civilians were killed.

“There were bodies everywhere. They were waiting to get into the pharmacy here, and they’re all dead.”A man who asked to be identified only by his name, Sergei, told AFP amid the blare of warning sirens.

Marina Yatsko, left, runs after her boyfriend Fedor with their 18-month-old son Kirill, who was killed in a shelling, as they arrive at a hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine, Friday, March 4, 2022. (Photo: AP /Evgeny Maloletka)

AFP journalists observed scenes of devastation at the site, despite the fact that Moscow insists that it does not launch attacks on civilian areas.

Moscow put its losses at 498 Russian soldiers on Wednesday, compared to 2,870 on the Ukrainian side. Kiev claimed on Sunday to have killed 11,000 Russian soldiers, without disclosing its military losses. Figures impossible to verify independently.

The UN, for its part, confirmed the death of 351 civilians and more than 700 wounded.

For the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, the forced exile of 1.5 million people meant “The fastest refugee crisis in Europe since the Second World War”. More than a million have arrived in Poland, according to border guards.

Marina Yatsko, left, and her boyfriend Fedor mourn the lifeless body of their 18-month-old son Kirill, killed in a shelling, as he lay on a stretcher at a hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine. (Photo: AP/Evgeni Maloletka)

Ukraine asks for planes

The head of US diplomacy, Antony Blinken, considered Sunday as “very believable” the information that speaks of “war crimes” russians in Ukraine.

Ukraine he has reiterated his calls for the West to increase military assistance, including the delivery of fighter jets.

But NATO allies have so far rejected the request for Ukraine to establish a no-fly zone, to try to avoid an unpredictable escalation.

Putin warned that if such a zone was established, he would regard it as a “participation in the armed conflict” of the countries that join the initiative.

For the same reasons, the Russian leader warned neighboring states to Ukraine so that they would not receive combat aircraft from this country.

Penalties and arrests

At least 4,600 people were arrested this Sunday for participating in protests in some sixty towns in Russia against military intervention in Ukraineindicated the NGO OVD-Info, specialized in following demonstrations.

In response to the invasion, the list of sanctions imposed by the West is lengthening every day and this weekend the announcement by the credit card giants American Express, Visa and Mastercard was added, as well as the Paypal payment platform, of the suspension of its operations in Russia.

The BBC indicated that its international information channel, BBC World News, stopped broadcasting in that country after the approval of a law that provides harsh prison sentences for those who broadcast “false information” about the army; and the social network TikToK announced that new videos can no longer be published on its platform from Russia.

In a sign that the strategy is starting to feel Russiathe Moscow government announced rationing amid concerns that a black market for hoarding could emerge.

Putin criticized the sanctions as “a way of waging war on Russia”.

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Source: Elcomercio