A third attempt at letting civilians escape through humanitarian corridors will be made in four Ukrainian cities – with some routes going into Russia.
Families were told they could safely flee Mariupol and Volnovakha on Saturday, and again on Sunday – but tragedy struck when Kremlin troops were accused of continuing shelling.
A new ceasefire will apparently come into force this morning after French President Emmanuel Macron personally sent a request to Vladimir Putin.
Corridors will be opened from Kyiv, Mariupol, Kharkiv and Sumy at 10am Moscow time (7am UK time).
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If Russia stands by the promise to hold fire, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians could be able to flee bomb shelters.
The Russian Defence Ministry has warned the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation ‘will carry out continuous objective monitoring of the evacuation, including with the use of UAVs’.
A statement read: ‘We warn that all attempts by the Ukrainian side to once again deceive Russia and the entire civilised world in disrupting the humanitarian operation, allegedly through the fault of the Russian Federations this time around are useless and pointless.’
Speaking yesterday about the second ceasefire, President Volodymyr Zelensky said: ‘There are none! Instead of humanitarian corridors, they can only ensure bloody ones.’
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The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said one reason behind the failures was a clear plan not being agreed by the two sides.
In an address to his nation last night, the Ukrainian leader vowed to ‘punish anyone who committed atrocities in this war’.
He said: ‘Right on the street, like in a shooting range, as they were just trying to get out of the city to escape.
‘The whole family! How many such families died in Ukraine?! We shall not forgive! We shall not forget!
‘We will punish anyone who committed atrocities in this war, we will find every b*****d who shot at our cities, at our people, who bombed our land, who launched rockets, who gave orders and pressed “launch” – you will have no safe place on this earth except the grave.’
Some corridors appear to involve the evacuation of Ukrainian civilians to Russian cities, the RIA Novosti news agency reports.
The route from Kyiv will lead to Belarus, while those who are seeking to flee Kharkiv will only have one corridor leading to Russia.
Those who want to leave Kyiv will also be able to be airlifted to Russia.
Corridors from Mariupol and Sumy will lead both to other Ukrainian cities and to Russia.
Mariupol officials have previously said they plan to evacuate over 200,000 civilians – half of the city’s population.
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