Status: 06.03.2022 3:18 p.m
For the second time, people in Mariupol should be allowed to leave the city. But as on Saturday, the ceasefire was apparently not observed. The evacuation had to be called off.
For the second day in a row, an attempt to bring people from the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, which has been fought over for days, to safety via a humanitarian corridor has failed.
According to Interior Ministry spokesman Anton Gerashchenko, the evacuation was halted. Russian troops would again not comply with the agreed cease-fire. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) also confirmed that the evacuation had to be canceled again.
In the morning, the coordination center in Mariupol announced that the fighting around the city should be stopped between 9 a.m. and 8 p.m. Central European Time. The city’s residents should be able to leave Mariupol from 11 a.m. They were supposed to get to Zaporizhia, about three hours away, via a humanitarian corridor.
Some people can leave Mariupol, according to separatists
After the planned start of the evacuation, pro-Russian separatists reported that about 300 people had left the city. The authorities in Mariupol have not confirmed this information. At the same time, the separatists again accused the Ukrainian side of “provocations”.
conflicting parties as a source
In the current situation, information on the course of the war, shelling and casualties provided by official bodies of the Russian and Ukrainian conflict parties cannot be directly checked by an independent body.
The first attempt failed because of shelling
It is the second time that a planned evacuation has failed. Both parties to the conflict announced on Saturday that they had agreed on a ceasefire to enable the population to flee. The compromise on establishing humanitarian corridors was the result of previous negotiations between representatives of Russia and Ukraine. A third round of negotiations is planned for Monday.
On Saturday, the agreement should be implemented in Mariupol and the nearby small town of Volnowacha. However, the evacuation was also postponed due to constant shelling. Russia and Ukraine blame each other for this. According to Gerashchenko, women, children and elderly people who have gotten out of Volnovakha, but are not yet safe, are now stuck.
ICRC urges compliance with agreed ceasefires
The ICRC urged both sides to stick to agreed agreements to enable evacuations – also to guarantee the safety of the relief workers on site. The organization stressed that its own forces remained on site to support further attempts to get people out of Mariupol.
In a telephone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan also urged that ceasefires must be observed to ensure escape via humanitarian corridors. Erdogan also called on Putin to sign a peace agreement. Putin, however, persists in his demands that Ukraine must cease hostilities and be demilitarized.
“Russia commits war crimes”
After the failed evacuation attempt on Saturday, the Russian armed forces apparently even increased the shelling of Mariupol. The city’s mayor, Wadym Boitschenko, spoke of a “very, very difficult state of siege”. He criticized that blocks of flats were being shelled “incessantly” and that “airplanes were dropping bombs on residential areas.”
The deputy mayor of Mariupol, Serhiy Orlov, spoke of war crimes by the Russian troops, since, for example, assembly points for the population were also being fired upon.
“We saw that the ceasefire lasted 30 minutes,” Serhiy Orlov/Deputy Mayor Mariupol
daily topics 11:30 p.m., 6.3.2022