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As the situation in several cities grows more dire — with hundreds of thousands without power, heat and water and facing regular bombardment — Ukraine is seeking to avert a further humanitarian disaster. More than 2 million people have fled to neighboring countries since the conflict began on Feb. 24.
Russia announced earlier Tuesday that it was opening corridors to evacuate civilians from several cities, including Mariupol and Kyiv, but said refugees from the capital would be flown to Russia after transiting through Belarus, a key Russian ally.
Such conditions are unacceptable to Ukraine, which has rejected the idea of evacuation corridors leading to Russia or Belarus. The Ukrainian government said Tuesday that the only agreed-upon evacuation routes were to other regions within Ukraine.
One humanitarian corridor, from the city of Sumy in northeastern Ukraine, managed to open on Tuesday morning, said Dmytro Zhivitsky, the regional governor, in an update on the messaging app Telegram. A column of buses headed west and then south to Poltava, a city about 100 miles away, he said, with priority given to children, disabled residents and pregnant women.
Zhivitsky said that as of Tuesday afternoon, people were able to leave the city in their own cars. He emphasized they should depart by early evening, ahead of the closing of the “green corridor” at 9 p.m. local time.
While the governor said the corridor stemmed from an agreement between Ukraine and Russia, he warned that there was still a “very high risk of provocation,” and he urged people to evaluate the risks of leaving for themselves.
Among those evacuated from Sumy were nearly 700 Indian students who had been trapped in the city without power or water and were taking refuge in makeshift underground shelters. From Poltava, they will board trains for western Ukraine, the Indian government said.
But a planned evacuation from Mariupol could not start Tuesday morning, according to Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk. The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said a fleet of vehicles was ready to deliver aid to the port city and carry civilians northwest toward another region of the country. It blamed Russian forces for violating the cease-fire and shelling the route.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia Tuesday of using siege tactics in Mariupol, saying Russian forces had shut off communication, blocked the delivery of food and cut electricity in the city. Mariupol is being “deliberately exhausted [and] deliberately tortured,” Zelensky said.
Mariupol “doesn’t have time to wait,” he said, adding that a child had died of dehydration in the city, “perhaps for the first time since the Nazi occupation.” The Washington Post could not independently verify that claim.
Mikhail Mizintsev, the head of the Russian National Defense Control Center, blamed Ukraine for the failure of evacuations Tuesday. He accused Ukrainian authorities of confirming only the route out of Sumy while rejecting others proposed by Russia, including several that he said would lead to Poland, Moldova and Romania.
The United Nations announced that at least 474 civilians have been confirmed killed in Ukraine since the start of the Russian invasion and said the true figure is likely to be far higher. The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights said in a letter published Tuesday that 861 civilians have been injured in the conflict, bringing its total confirmed civilian toll for deaths and injuries to 1,335 since Feb. 24.
“Most of the civilian casualties recorded were caused by the use of explosive weapons with a wide impact area, including shelling from heavy artillery and multi-launch rocket systems, and missile and airstrikes,” the human rights office wrote.
Despite the lack of protected evacuation corridors, Ukrainians have flooded into neighboring countries in staggering numbers. The United Nations on Tuesday said 2 million people have fled, making it the fastest growing refugee crisis in Europe since World War II. Half of those fleeing are children, UNICEF said on Monday.
Ukraine’s State Customs Service said Monday that citizens seeking safe haven in other European countries should prioritize transiting through Hungary, Romania, Slovakia and Moldova, where checkpoints are empty or free of large crowds. Land crossings into Poland, which has taken in more than 1 million people, are among the most congested, the agency warned.
Francis and Adam reported from London. Amar Nadhir in London; Miriam Berger and Timothy Bella in Washington; Amy Cheng in Seoul; Niha Masih in New Delhi; and other Washington Post staff contributed to this report.
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