Red Cross heads again for Mariupol
ZAPORIZHZHIA (Reuters) – A Red Cross convoy tried again to evacuate civilians from the besieged port of Mariupol yesterday as Russian forces looked to be regrouping for new attacks in southeast Ukraine.
Encircled since the early days of Russia’s five-week-old invasion, Mariupol has been Moscow’s main target in Ukraine’s southeastern region of Donbas. Tens of thousands there are trapped with scant access to food and water.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) sent a team on Friday to lead a convoy of about 54 Ukrainian buses and other private vehicles out of the city, but they turned back, saying conditions made it impossible to proceed. A previous Red Cross evacuation attempt in early March failed.
Russia and Ukraine have agreed to humanitarian corridors during the war that have facilitated the evacuation of thousands of civilians. The ICRC says both sides approved its Mariupol operation, but key logistics were still being worked out.
In an early morning video address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned that Russian troops had moved toward Donbas and the heavily bombarded northeastern city of Kharkiv.
“I hope there may still be solutions for the situation in Mariupol,” Zelensky said. “The whole world has to react to this humanitarian catastrophe.”
Russia denies targeting civilians in an invasion that began on Feb. 24 when Russian President Vladimir Putin launched what he called a “special military operation,” the biggest attack on a European state since World War Two.
The West calls it an unprovoked war of aggression that has killed thousands, uprooted a quarter of Ukraine’s population and brought tensions between Russia and the United States to their worst point since the Cold War.
At peace talks this week, Russia said its war efforts would now focus on Donbas, where it has backed separatists fighting Ukrainian forces since 2014. Russian troops left behind shattered villages and their own abandoned tanks as they moved away from the capital Kyiv.
After failing to capture a single major city, Russia has painted its drawdown of forces near Kyiv as a goodwill gesture in the peace negotiations. Ukraine and its allies say Russian forces have been forced to regroup after suffering heavy losses.
British military intelligence said on Saturday that Ukrainian forces continued to advance against withdrawing enemy forces in the vicinity of Kyiv, and that Russian troops had abandoned Hostomel airport in a northwest suburb of the capital, where there has been fighting since the first day.