Status: 05.03.2022 12:38 p.m
The population of Mariupol and Volnowakha should be able to leave the cities during a ceasefire lasting several hours. But around Mariupol the fighting seems to be going on. The evacuation is faltering – and both sides blame each other.
The hope for the population of Mariupol to be able to get to safety from the Ukrainian port city, which has been increasingly fought over for days, seems to have been dashed for the time being. The city administration accused the Russian armed forces of not complying with the ceasefire that had been agreed for a few hours.
The Russian Ministry of Defense had announced a ceasefire for Mariupol and the small town of Volnowacha in the east of the country in the morning. During this time, people should be able to escape from both cities via humanitarian corridors.
However, according to the Mariupol city administration, the bombardment of the city and its surroundings by Russian troops is still ongoing. The planned evacuation must therefore be postponed “for security reasons”. The Russian news agency RIA, citing the Foreign Ministry in Moscow, reported that neither in Mariupol nor in Volnovakha had people left the cities via humanitarian corridors.
Lavrov blames the Ukrainian authorities
Olexii Arestovych, advisor to the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyj, also accused Russia on television of not complying with the ceasefire that was necessary and agreed for the evacuation. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, on the other hand, sees responsibility with the Ukrainian authorities. These would not let the civilians leave the country. Russia has been ready to set up humanitarian corridors since the beginning of the military operation in Ukraine. In addition, Lavrov again emphasized that Russian forces would only attack the military infrastructure in Ukraine.
According to the Reuters news agency, the fighting was originally supposed to stop between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. Central European Time. According to estimates by Ukraine, around 200,000 residents of Mariupol were able to use the humanitarian corridor to escape to safety.
Corridor should lead to Zaporizhia
The route of the humanitarian corridor planned for the evacuation has been precisely defined, the city council in Mariupol said in the morning. People should have been taken out of the city on public buses or left Mariupol in their own cars, reports said ARD correspondent Palina Milling.
According to available information, the planned corridor should be a little more than 220 kilometers long. It leads out of Mariupol in a southwesterly direction to Zaporizhia. Attacks have also been reported from there, but the situation so far seems less dramatic than in Mariupol. If you want to flee further to Poland, you would have to cover a little more than 1000 kilometers.
Both cities under fire for days
Both the port city of Mariupol and the small town of Volnowacha have been under military pressure from the advancing Russian army for days. Mariupol has been reporting artillery shelling for days. Power lines have been destroyed and the water supply has been interrupted. According to the city, repair work should have been carried out and relief supplies brought to the city during the ceasefire.
Volnovakha in eastern Ukraine has also been under massive fire for more than a week. The residents report that they endured in cold basements without water, food, electricity and heating. Eyewitnesses report that several streets had burned down and that the bodies of dead soldiers were simply lying on the street. Aid organizations have not yet been able to penetrate the city. About 15,000 people could leave Wolnowacha via a so-called green corridor, it was reported Palina Milling further.
Port of Mariupol under “blockade”
The mayor of Mariupol, Wadym Boitschenko, had reinforced the hope that a humanitarian corridor would soon be set up from the city with 440,000 inhabitants and that a ceasefire would be declared for it. He had spoken of a “blockade” of the port of Mariupol. For five days, Boitschenko continued, the city had been suffering from “relentless attacks” from the Russian side. While humanitarian problems are being solved and every way is being sought “to get Mariupol out of the blockade,” the security forces are standing on the outskirts of the city as a “reliable shield,” said Boichenko. They would not have let the “invaders” into the city even on the ninth day of the war.
Encirclement of Kyiv and Kharkiv
According to the Ukrainian army, Russian troops have continued their offensive with air support and the use of high-precision weapons. The Russian side is trying to encircle the capital Kyiv and the metropolis Kharkiv, according to a report published by the Ukrainian army on Saturday night. In the east, she wants to create a land corridor from the separatist areas of Luhansk and Donetsk to the Crimean peninsula annexed by Russia.
“Every day it’s a challenge to find fresh bread”, Anastasia Magazova, journalist
Morning magazine Extra, March 5, 2022
Russian troops also continued to try to reach the administrative borders of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions in order to create a land corridor from the Russian-annexed Crimean peninsula to the separatist areas.
Russian troops have entered some areas.
Image: ISW/ 03/04/2022
The Ukrainian armed forces continue to emphasize that attacks will be repelled and opponents will be defeated. The account cannot be independently verified, nor can Russian information. The Russian agency Tass reported that the Ukrainian army had shelled two settlements in the self-declared People’s Republic of Luhansk three times within 24 hours. Details on possible victims or damage are not yet available.
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.
reporting stopped
Reliable information about the war is likely to become even more sparse. Because in response to a new media law in Russia, several international broadcasters and agencies are now partially or completely ceasing their work in Russia, including CNN, the BBC, the Canadian broadcaster CBC and Bloomberg. Russian President Vladimir Putin signed several laws on Friday evening, according to which “false information” about the Russian armed forces could be imprisoned.
Third round of ceasefire negotiations
A good week after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, both sides are planning another round of negotiations over the weekend. The announced third round of negotiations on a ceasefire will probably take place in Belarus again. An exact date was not initially given.