LVIV, Ukraine (AP) — The humanitarian crisis in Ukraine deepened on Monday as Russian forces ramped up their firepower and food, water, heat and medicine became increasingly scarce, with the country furnishing it with a medieval-style call by Moscow to Condemned as a siege. ,
A third round of talks between the two sides ended with a top Ukrainian official saying minor, unspecified progress had been made towards establishing safe corridors that would allow civilians to avoid fighting. Russia’s chief negotiator said he expects those corridors to start operating on Tuesday.
But this remained to be seen, given the failure of previous efforts to lead civilians to safety in the midst of the largest ground war in Europe since World War II.
In the second week of the offensive, Russian troops made significant progress in southern Ukraine, but stayed in some other areas, a top US official said, adding that several countries were discussing whether to launch a warplane for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. be made available.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s army continued to hit cities with rockets, and fierce fighting broke out in places. In protesting against the bombing, Zelensky said the Ukrainian military was showing unprecedented courage.
“The problem is that for one Ukrainian soldier, we have 10 Russian soldiers, and for one Ukrainian tank, we have 50 Russian tanks,” Zelensky told ABC News in an interview aired Monday night. He said the gap in forces was narrowing and that even if Russian forces “come into all our cities,” they would be met with an insurgency.
Efforts to establish safe passage for civilians failed over the weekend amid Russian shelling. Ahead of Monday’s talks, Russia announced a new plan, saying citizens would be allowed to leave Kyiv, Mariupol, Kharkiv and Sumy.
Irpin escapes from the city of Irpin, northwest of Kyiv, on March 7, 2022 (Dmitar Dilkop/AFP)
But several evacuation routes led to Russia or its ally Belarus, which has served as a launch pad for the invasion. Ukraine instead proposed eight routes, allowing civilians to travel to the country’s western regions with no shelling.
Later, Russia’s UN ambassador, Vasily Nebenzia, told the UN Security Council that Russia would hold a ceasefire on Tuesday morning and suggested that the humanitarian corridor leading away from Kyiv, Mariupol, Sumy and Chernigov give people an alternative. can go wherever they want to go.
“There is no demand in this proposal to necessarily deport citizens to Russia, Russian territory,” he said.
Under Secretary-General Martin Griffiths, the UN humanitarian chief, addressed the Security Council and urged people to take a safe route “in the direction they choose”.
Zelensky’s office would not comment on the Russian proposal, saying only that Moscow’s plans can be trusted only when a safe evacuation begins. The office said Deputy Prime Minister Irina Vereshchuk planned to make a statement on the issue on Tuesday morning.
March 7, 2022 (Luisa Goliamacki/AFP) Hundreds of refugees queue up after crossing the Ukrainian border into Poland, at the Medica border crossing in Poland, as they wait to be transferred to Poland.
In the besieged southern port of Mariupol, one of the most desperate cities, an estimated 200,000 people – nearly half the population of 430,000 – were expected to flee, and Red Cross officials waited to hear when a corridor was established. Will go
The city lacks water, food and electricity, and cellphone networks are down. Shops have been looted as residents searched for essential goods. Zelensky, in a video address from his office in Kyiv near midnight, accused Russia of laying mines on the “agreed route to get food and medicine to the Mariupol people, children.”
Police passed through Mariupol, advising people to stay in shelters until they heard official messages broadcast over loudspeakers to evacuate.
Mariupol’s hospitals are facing acute shortages of antibiotics and painkillers, and doctors performed few emergency procedures without them.
The lack of phone service left worried citizens turning to strangers to ask if they knew relatives living in other parts of the city and whether they were safe.
The battle is significant for Mariupol because its capture could allow Moscow to establish a land corridor to Crimea, which Russia seized from Ukraine in 2014.
In the capital, Kyiv, soldiers and volunteers have built hundreds of checkpoints to protect the city of about 4 million, often using sandbags, stacked tires and pointy cables. Some barricades looked important, more than two storeys high with heavy concrete slabs and sandbags, while others appeared more disorganized, with hundreds of books used to weigh piles of tyres.
“Every house, every street, every outpost, if need be, we will fight to the death,” said Mayor Vitaly Klitschko.
A Ukrainian soldier guards a checkpoint on a main street in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, March 7, 2022. (AP/Vadim Ghirda)
Apartment buildings were heavily shelled in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city with 1.4 million people.
“I think it hit the fourth floor below us,” said Dmitry Sedorenko from his Kharkiv hospital bed. “Immediately, everything began to burn and disintegrate.”
When the floor fell under him, he crawled out through the third story, passing the bodies of some of his neighbors.
Pedestrians walk behind a destroyed car following a gunfight in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, on March 7, 2022. (Sergei Bobok / AFP)
Klitschko reported that fierce fighting continues in the Kyiv region, especially around Buka, Hostomel, Vorzel and Irpin in the north-west of the capital.
In the Irpin area, which has been cut off from electricity, water and heat for three days, eyewitnesses saw at least three tanks and said Russian soldiers were seizing homes and cars.
A few miles away, in the small town of Horenka, where shelling turned an area to ash and pieces of glass, rescuers and residents picked up through the ruins as chickens pecked around them.
A man opens his arms as he stands near a house destroyed by Russian artillery fire, in the village of Horenka, near Kyiv, Ukraine, on March 6, 2022. (Efrem Lukatsky / AP)
“what are they doing?” Rescue worker Vasil Oksak asked the Russian attackers. “Two small children and two elderly people lived here. Come in and see what they’ve done.”
In the south, Russian forces also continued their offensive in Mykolaiv, opening fire on the Black Sea shipbuilding center of half a million people, according to the Ukrainian military. Rescuers said they were controlling the fire caused by rocket attacks in residential areas.
In Odessa, Ukraine’s Black Sea gem, explosions were heard late Monday, a day after Zelensky warned the city could be targeted by Russia next. The BBC reported that the blasts were intercepted missiles.
In The Hague, Netherlands, Ukraine urged the International Court of Justice to halt Russia’s aggression, saying Moscow was committing widespread war crimes.
Body of a civilian killed in a Russian rocket attack into a car in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, March 6, 2022. (AP photo/Andrew Marienko)
Jonathan Gimblet, a member of Ukraine’s legal team, said Russia is resorting to “medieval siege warfare, besieging cities, cutting off escape routes and mobilizing civilian populations with heavy armament.”
Russia turned down the court proceedings, leaving its seats vacant in the Great Hall of Justice.
On Sunday, Zelensky vowed to hunt down and punish “every bastard” who targets civilians.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky speaking at a virtual meeting of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations on March 7, 2022. (screen capture via JTA)
The fighting has raised energy prices and plunging stocks around the world, and threatens the food supplies and livelihoods of people around the world who depend on crops cultivated in the fertile Black Sea region.
The UN Human Rights Office confirmed the deaths of 406 civilians but said the actual number was much higher. The invasion has also sent 1.7 million people fleeing Ukraine.
On Monday, Moscow again announced a series of demands to halt the invasion, including that Ukraine recognizes Crimea as part of Russia and the eastern regions controlled by Moscow-backed separatist fighters as independent. It also insisted that Ukraine amend its constitution to guarantee that it would not join international bodies such as NATO and the European Union. Ukraine has already rejected those demands.
Zelensky has called for more punitive measures against Russia, including a global boycott of its oil exports, which are critical to its economy.
Ukraine’s negotiating team (left) meets with the Russian delegation for talks in Belarus, close to the Polish-Belarusian border, March 7, 2022. (Maxim Guchek/Belta Pool Photo via AP)
“If (Russia) does not want to follow civilized rules, they should not receive goods and services from civilisation,” he said in a video address.
He has also demanded more war planes. Deputy US Secretary of State Wendy Sherman said officials are “trying to see if this is possible and feasible.”
While the West is waging an arms race in Ukraine such as anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles, some officials fear the war could see sending warplanes as a direct involvement by Moscow in the war.
People protest the Russian invasion of Ukraine during a rally outside the White House in Washington, March 6, 2022. (AP photo/Alex Brandon)
One possible scenario under discussion: former Soviet bloc nations that are now members of NATO could send their Soviet-era MiGs to Ukraine, which are trained to fly Ukrainian pilots, and the US would then send those countries’ planes. Will replace with the American-made F-16. ,
The Russian invasion has terrified the surrounding countries that the war may spread to them.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken began the electric journey of the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, former Soviet republics that are members of NATO. Blinken hoped to reassure him of the coalition’s security.
NATO has shown no interest in sending troops into the country and has rejected Zelensky’s pleas for setting up a no-fly zone for fear of starting a wider war.
TOI staff contributed to this report.