Lviv, March 5: The first ceasefire attempted in Ukraine to evacuate desperate civilians collapsed Saturday amid ongoing shelling as Russian and Ukrainian officials traded blame and Moscow tightened its grip on the war-battered country’s strategic seacoast.
The struggle to enforce the temporary ceasefire in the southeastern port of Mariupol and the eastern city of Volnovakha showed the fragility of efforts to stop the fighting across Ukraine as the number of people fleeing the country reached 1.4 million just 10 days after Russian forces invaded.
Ukrainian officials said Russian artillery fire and airstrikes had prevented residents from leaving before the agreed-to evacuations got underway. Russian President Vladimir Putin accused Ukraine of sabotaging the effort and claimed the actions of Ukraine’s leadership called into question the future of the country’s statehood.
“If this happens, it will be entirely on their conscience,” Putin said.
Earlier, the Russian defence ministry said it had agreed with Ukraine on evacuation routes out of the two cities. Before the announcement, Russia’s days-long assault had caused growing misery in Mariupol, where AP journalists witnessed doctors make unsuccessful attempts to save the lives of wounded children, pharmacies ran bare and hundreds of thousands of people faced food and water shortages in freezing weather.
In comments carried on Ukrainian television, Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boychenko said thousands of residents had gathered for safe passage out of the city when shelling began Saturday.
“We value the life of every inhabitant of Mariupol and we cannot risk it, so we stopped the evacuation,” he said.
In recent days, Ukraine had urged Moscow to create humanitarian corridors to allow children, women and the older adults to flee the fighting, calling them “question No. 1.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky held out the possibility that talks with Russia could result in a sustained, if limited ceasefire Saturday. Elsewhere in the country, Ukrainian forces were holding key cities in central and southeastern Ukraine, while the Russians were trying to keep Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, Chernihiv and Sumy encircled, he said.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Saturday said Russia was ready for a third round of talks on that and other issues, but he asserted that “the Ukrainian side, the most interested side here, it would seem, is constantly making up various pretexts to delay the beginning of another meeting.”
Diplomatic efforts continued as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Poland to meet with the prime minister and foreign minister, a day after attending a NATO meeting in Brussels in which the alliance pledged to step up support for eastern flank members.
In Moscow, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett was meeting with Putin at the Kremlin. Israel maintains good relations with both Russia and Ukraine, and Bennett has offered to act as an intermediary in the conflict. No details of Saturday’s meeting have yet emerged.
In the wake of Western sanctions, Aeroflot, Russia’s flagship state-owned airline, announced that it plans to halt all international flights. except to Belarus, starting Tuesday.
At least 351 civilians have been confirmed killed since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, but the true number is probably much higher, the UN human rights office has said.
Zelensky said Saturday that that 10,000 Russian troops had died in the war, a claim that could not be independently verified. “We’re inflicting losses on the occupants they could not see in their worst nightmare,” the Ukrainian leader said.
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