No heating, almost no water and no electricity. A million people have been resisting for three days in critical conditions in the port city of Mariupol, besieged by the forces of Vladimir Putin. This Saturday, the Russian Army announced a partial and brief ceasefire for that city and for the southern town of Volnovakha, which would allow the establishment of the humanitarian corridor agreed by the Ukrainian and Russian negotiators on Thursday. The Mariupol mayor’s office has denounced, however, that Russia is not respecting the ceasefire at the moment and that it continues to use “hard artillery and rockets” against the city, from which it is not possible to establish a safe passage for civilians under the fire.
Experts had already doubted Russian compliance with the measure and warn that the ceasefire, which has the Red Cross as guarantor, according to Ukraine, could benefit Russia, which it can take advantage of to regroup, resupply and, when the majority of the civilian population, launch a harsh offensive to occupy Mariupol, a strategic city on the Sea of Azov to advance their plans to create a corridor from the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, which was illegally annexed in 2014, and Donbas.
The ceasefire began at 11:00 a.m. (Ukrainian time) and lasted until 4:00 p.m., according to the Russian Defense Ministry. The Ukrainian government has explained that the plan is to evacuate some 200,000 people from the port city and that it may need to be done in several phases. More than 15,000 people need to leave Volnovakha, located between the Sea of Azov and the city of Donetsk, controlled by pro-Russian separatists supported by the Kremlin since 2014. The town of 21,000 inhabitants is practically devastated by the bombing, the corpses lie on the streets without being able to recover and the remaining citizens of Volnovakha remain in shelters unable to leave due to the attacks and are running out of food, according to local deputy Dmitro Lubinets.
If the ceasefire goes ahead, those who manage to leave Mariupol and Vonovakha – both in the Donetsk region that Russia no longer recognizes as part of Ukraine, but as an independent state as pro-Russian separatists claim – will head to the city Zaporiya. “Since our city is constantly under fire and ruthless attacks by the occupiers, there is no other solution,” Vadim Boichenko, mayor of Mariupol, lamented in a statement declaring that this would be the first of several evacuations.
The Minister for the Occupied Territories of Ukraine, Iryna Vereshchuk, has warned that Russian troops can take advantage of the ceasefire to advance on Ukrainian positions, but even so, the Government is working to agree on other humanitarian corridors for Jergon, Sumi and Chernihiv. (northwest of Kiev).
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Emma Beals, non-resident researcher at the middle east institute, who has studied the guidelines of Russian strategies in Syria, for example, where its support was key to the Bachar al-Assad regime, stresses that the ceasefire and humanitarian corridors are extremely necessary to evacuate the civilian population and the entry of humanitarian assistance, but that the Russian agreements should be viewed with “large doses of skepticism”. “In Syria, we have seen Russia accept that ceasefire that it did not follow and offer humanitarian corridors that were unsafe or inappropriate and could not be used,” he notes. “Historically, Russia has agreed to implement a ceasefire only when it is in line with its strategic ambitions, with what can be a complete military victory,” Beals warns.
After two dialogue tables, the Ukrainian and Russian envoys agreed on Thursday that temporary steps would be enabled for civilians in cities that are in a critical situation because they have been surrounded by the Russian army. Talks between the Kiev and Moscow teams are scheduled to resume this Saturday, but only if there is progress in the development of humanitarian corridors, Ukrainian sources said.
The war continues. The spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry, Igor Konashenkov, stressed this Saturday that the siege on Mariupol – which, in his words, is being applied by the forces of the self-proclaimed “people’s republic” of Donetsk – continues to tighten. Russia assures that it has taken control of other small towns in the area.
The Russian Defense Ministry assures that its bombardments, which are leaving Ukrainian towns and cities reduced to rubble, are being of surgical precision and do not target residential areas and accuses Kiev of using civilians as human shields and attacking Russian forces. from residential areas. The Ukrainian government denounces that the Russian army forcefully attacks civilian infrastructure and areas inhabited by civilians.
Meanwhile, Putin’s forces, who assures that he wants to “denazify” Ukraine, continue to try to advance on other flanks of the south to take control of the port city of Odesa and arrest the Ukrainian government’s access to the sea. They already control the city of Kherson, the first large city to fall under Russian hands, where they have turned off Ukrainian telecommunications lines to isolate the city from communications from the rest of the country and where dozens of people took to the streets on Friday night to protest against the Russian occupation.
As the Russian offensive hardens, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is raising his tone to ask for help from his allies. This Saturday, in a video published on networks, he has tried to send a hopeful message to the Ukrainian citizens who have fled the country – around a million people, according to the UN. “I am sure that soon we will be able to say to our people: ‘Come back, come back from Poland, Romania, Slovakia and all the other countries. Come back because there is no longer a threat”, he has said.
For Ukraine, the biggest challenge is air strikes, Defense Minister Oleksi Reznikov said on Saturday. “Planes of all kinds are bombing cities, towns and civilian infrastructure, including critical and dangerous nuclear and hydroelectric plants,” he said.
Russian troop advance (as of March 4)
annexed by
Russia in 2014
Sources: Occupied Territories
(Institute for the Study of War).
Russian troop advance (as of March 4)
annexed by
Russia in 2014
Sources: Occupied Territories
(Institute for the Study of War).
Russian troop advance (as of March 4)
annexed by
Russia in 2014
Sources: Occupied Territories (Institute for the Study of War).
NATO on Friday night refused to establish the no-fly zone that President Zelensky had called for, demanding that it not intervene by air or land for fear Russia would extend its aggression to other parts of Europe. Creating the exclusion zone, Atlantic Alliance Secretary Jens Stoltenberg explained, would require deploying NATO fighter jets and possibly “shooting down Russian planes.” “As NATO allies, we have a responsibility to prevent this war from escalating beyond Ukraine,” Stoltenberg said. “We have made it clear that we are not going to enter Ukraine, either on the ground or in Ukrainian airspace,” he added.
Zelensky charged against the Alliance’s decision, which he sees as a sign of NATO’s weakness and division. “All the people who die from this day on will also die because of you,” the Ukrainian president said in a video, adding that the Alliance’s refusal to act has given Moscow a “green light” signal to attack Ukrainian towns and cities.
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