Ukraine calls off Mariupol evacuation and blames Russia of violating cease

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Ukraine called off an attempt to evacuate civilians from the besieged city of Mariupol after accusing Russia of violating a ceasefire and attacking the escape route for hundreds of thousands of beleaguered civilians.

Mariupol, which is home to about 450,000 people, has been subjected to a barrage of shells for the past five days as Russian forces laid siege to Ukrainian towns and cities. Authorities say it is encircled and residents have been left without electricity, heating and water, with most confined to freezing bomb shelters.

“The evacuation of the population is to be rescheduled, in view of the fact that the Russians are not adhering to the ‘quiet regime’ and have continued to fire on Mariupol and its environs,” the local government said in a statement.

It called on residents to make their way to bomb shelters, adding that talks were under way with Russian forces on restoring the ceasefire and “creating a safe humanitarian corridor”.

Russia’s defense ministry insisted it had stopped firing on the city and accused “Ukrainian forces and national battalions of taking advantage of the declared ‘quiet regime’ to regroup on defensive positions”.

Moscow had also said it would stop firing on the eastern town of Volnovakha.

Iryna Vereshchuk, Ukraine’s minister for reintegration, previously told local media that the Russian ceasefire was to last from 9am until 4pm Kyiv time and would allow 200,000 people to be evacuated from Mariupol and more than 15,000 from Volnovakha. She said civilians would pass through a “green corridor” to the south-eastern city of Zaporizhzhia.

But she later said attempts to move people to safety had been thwarted by fighting along parts of the humanitarian corridor between Mariupol and Zaporozhzhia. She appealed to the Russians to “stop the shelling . . . so that women, children and the elderly can leave.”

In a statement, the International Committee of the Red Cross said: “We understand that the safe passage operations from Mariupol and Volnovakha will not start today.” The humanitarian organization said it was “ready to help facilitate the safe passage of civilians agreement once the parties have reached an reached”.

Ukraine faces an unfolding humanitarian disaster as food, water and medicine run short. More than 1.2mn people have fled in search of safety.

In parts of the country already captured by Russian forces there were signs of public anger at the occupation. Video footage posted on social media showed a huge demonstration in the city of Kherson, in southern Ukraine, which was overrun by Russian troops earlier this week.

Governments around the world have condemned Russian president Vladimir Putin’s tactics in Ukraine, especially the indiscriminate shelling of cities that has laid waste to residential areas and caused heavy consequence among the civilian population. The US estimates that Russia has unleashed more than 500 missiles since the start of the invasion.

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The UK’s defense ministry said Russian forces were likely to advance on two more port cities in Ukraine, following their assault on Mariupol.

Russia is “probably advancing” towards the southern port city of Mykolaiv, the ministry said on Saturday, but there was a “realistic possibility” that some Russian forces would bypass the city and push towards Odesa, Ukraine’s main port on the Black Sea.

Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, on Saturday reiterated his calls for Nato to impose a no-fly zone over his country — which the alliance has so far rejected.

“We have seen the opinion of ordinary people in America who support ordinary people in Ukraine,” he said. “What else is needed to make a decision?”

Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said Nato members were “perfectly aware of the impossibility of their direct involvement in the Ukraine events”, according to Interfax, the Russian news agency.

Zelensky said Ukrainian forces continued to control key cities including Kharkiv in the east, Mykolaiv in the south and Chernihiv in the north.

“We are inflicting losses on the occupiers that they did not imagine in their worst dreams,” he said.

Military analysts said Russia’s main objective remained the encirclement of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, an advance that western officials say has made little discernible progress for several days because of tactical and logistical failures.

A US official said Russian soldiers also remained 10km from the centers of both Chernihiv and Kharkiv, which are under bombardment from the air.

In Russia, thousands of people have traveled to neighborhood states as an intensifying crackdown on the country’s independent media forced a number of news outlets to suspend their work.

Moscow announced on Friday that it was banning Facebook and restricting access to Twitter. The authorities have also shut down liberal media outlets such as Echo of Moscow and TV Rain, while some websites have been blocked, including British broadcaster the BBC.

Russian and Western left the country after Moscow imposed a new law that threatened jail terms of up to 15 years for those spreading “fake news”.

Russians began to leave the nation this week after rumours circulated in Moscow that the authorities might be about to declare martial law.

“A number of my colleagues in Moscow just ran out of the office in what they were wearing to cash machines to take out what money they could, and started heading for the borders,” said one senior member of a professional services firm.

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