Kyiv, Ukraine – The Russian attack on Ukraine forced more than 10 million people from their homes, the United Nations said, and the scale of the humanitarian disaster showed no signs of backing down with Moscow. presses his attack With missile strikes and artillery fire.
“The war in Ukraine is so devastating that 10 million have fled – either internally displaced or as refugees abroad,” UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said on Sunday. This means that nearly a quarter of the country’s pre-war population was uprooted.
About 3.4 million people have left Ukraine since the Russian offensive began on February 24, mostly women and children bound for Poland, according to the United Nations, which says number of refugees It can reach 4 million. The flow of people has decreased in recent days, but still exceeds 50,000 refugees per day, according to the latest United Nations figures.
On Saturday, people fled from Mariupol, Ukraine.
Photo:
Reuters
A mother hugs her son, who escaped from Mariupol and arrived on Sunday at the train station in Lviv, western Ukraine.
Photo:
Bernat Armango/The Associated Press
The streets of the capital, Kyiv, are mostly deserted. Some city officials suspect that more than half of its residents have left, though exact numbers are not known. Infantry and automobiles were largely replaced by makeshift roadblocks of concrete slabs, mounds of dirt, and I-beams welded together at individual angles to create tank traps to impede an anticipated Russian attack. Garbage continues to be received from the municipality, but abandoned cars wrecked throughout the city are a common site. After an accident, there are no debris removal services.
The Russian Defense Ministry showed There is no sign of giving up Even as her army suffered great losses. On Sunday, it said its forces carried out a range of activities, including firing a number of long-range weapons at targets in Ukraine, striking a military base in the country’s Zhytomyr region, where they claimed foreign fighters, and attacking a large number. Military installations in helicopter raids.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sunday that his country’s army was inflicting heavy losses on Russian forces, but added: “We are well aware that Russia has limitless human resources, a lot of equipment, missiles and bombs.”
In Mariupol, where The fight has reached the streetsThe humanitarian situation worsened. Ukrainian officials said Russia bombed an art school where about 400 people were sheltering, trapping people under rubble. Their condition cannot be determined.
The incident comes days after the bombing of a theater in the city. rescue workers Release 130 people From under the rubble as of Friday, although 1,300 people were still trapped in the basement of the theater, a local official said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky delivered a video address on Sunday in Kyiv.
Photo:
Ukrainian Presidential Press Service/AFP/Getty Images
On Sunday, Russian Defense Minister Lloyd Austin said the Russian military was deliberately targeting population centers because Russian President Vladimir Putin’s campaign was stalled in the face of an effective Ukrainian defense and counterattack.
“He hasn’t been able to achieve the goals he wants to achieve as quickly as he wants to achieve them,” Mr. Austin told CBS News. “He had the effect of moving his troops into the wood chipper.”
President Biden heads to Europe this week for a round of meetings with allies and partners in NATO, the Group of Seven and European countries, where they are expected to discuss deterrence efforts, humanitarian relief and the sanctions campaign against Russia. The White House said on Sunday that Biden would not visit Ukraine, a day after inviting him to former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko as a show of solidarity.
Pope Francis on Sunday denounced the “violent aggression against Ukraine … a senseless massacre where chaos and atrocities are repeated every day,” and called on the international community to put an end to “this abhorrent war.” The Pope, speaking from a window overlooking St. Peter’s Square after the usual noon prayer, continued his practice of: Not calling Russia the aggressor in the war, but emphasized the horrors inflicted on the Ukrainian population by the invasion.
“This week, rockets and bombs have hit civilians, the elderly, children and pregnant women,” the Pope said. “Many grandparents, sick and poor, separated from their families, many children and vulnerable people are still dying under the bombing.”
An apartment building was destroyed in a Russian raid in Kyiv, Ukraine.
Photo:
Christopher Okekone in The Wall Street Journal
On Saturday, people waited after being evacuated from Irbin on the outskirts of Kyiv.
Photo:
Roman Bilibili/Shutterstock
On Sunday, the Mariupol city council said about 4,000 civilians had been killed in the city since the fighting began. Russian forces were also accused of forcibly evacuating some of the city’s residents to Russia and to the territories of Donetsk and Luhansk, the two pro-Russian breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine.
“People who are forcibly transferred to Russian territory, their Ukrainian passports have been confiscated and given papers that have no legal weight and are not accepted in the civilized world,” the council said in a statement posted to Telegram on Sunday.
Russia has not commented on reports of forced evacuation from Mariupol.
Mariupol is a strategic target for Moscow as it attempts to open a land corridor to Russia’s annexed Crimea and divert the momentum in its three-week-old conquest. Ukrainian officials said, during weeks of bombing and attack, they had kept Russian forces at bay on the outskirts of Mariupol, but that changed on Saturday.
The capture of Mariupol will be a victory for Russia, which has achieved so far They failed to take any large Ukrainian cities since the beginning of its conquest.
“Mariopol hasn’t fallen yet,” retired US General David Petraeus said on CNN. “Runned food, fuel, water, everything but heart. They are still fighting hard. This is the first place the Russians have to do urban non-joking combat, where they have to go from block to block. Every room in this kind of must be cleaned up. endeavours. They discover that it is soldier-intensive, and it eliminates the reserves and forces that you have.”
Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Irina Vereshuk said Sunday that Russia and Ukraine have agreed on a humanitarian corridor to evacuate residents from Mariupol and send aid. It added that it was one of seven humanitarian corridors agreed on Sunday. Sometimes those lanes had to be abandoned after they had come under fire.
Mr. Zelensky said that more than 4,000 Mariupol residents managed to escape through this pass on Saturday.
Meanwhile, Mr. Zelensky on Sunday suspended the activities of 11 political parties with ties to Russia that Ukrainian officials have long believed served as fronts for the Kremlin. Moscow seeks to install pro-Russian leaders in the areas it has occupied since the start of its invasion.
On Friday, local residents carried water from a warehouse on the outskirts of Mariupol, Ukraine.
Photo:
Alexey Alexandrov/The Associated Press
One party leader, Viktor Medvedchuk, fled his home where he was under house arrest in Kyiv days after the Russian invasion began last month, according to Ukrainian officials.
Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of Russia’s lower house of parliament, condemned the move and said Mr. Zelensky’s action was a mistake that divided the country.
On the other hand, Oleksandr Kamyshin, head of the Ukrainian State Railways Corporation, told a TV channel that there is no longer a rail connection between his country and Belarus. Mr. Kamyshin declined to provide any details on how the line would be cut, but thanked Belarusian railway operators “for what they are doing”.
Russia was using Belarus as a springboard for its attack on Ukraine.
Areas no longer controlled by Ukraine as of Friday
The direction of the invasion forces
Under the control of or allied with Russia
Main refugee transit sites
Chernobyl
Not in operation
The territory of Ukraine, recognized by Putin as independent
converts it
separatists
Areas no longer controlled by Ukraine as of Friday
The direction of the invasion forces
Under the control of or allied with Russia
The territory of Ukraine, recognized by Putin as independent
Main refugee transit sites
Chernobyl
Not in operation
controlled by
separatists
Areas no longer controlled by Ukraine as of Friday
The direction of the invasion forces
Under the control of or allied with Russia
Main refugee transit sites
The territory of Ukraine, recognized by Putin as independent
Chernobyl
Not in operation
controlled by
separatists
Areas no longer controlled by Ukraine as of Friday
The direction of the invasion forces
Under the control of or allied with Russia
Main refugee transit sites
The territory of Ukraine, recognized by Putin as independent
Areas no longer controlled by Ukraine as of Friday
The direction of the invasion forces
Under the control of or allied with Russia
Main refugee transit sites
The territory of Ukraine, recognized by Putin as independent
—Matthew Luxmore, Frances X Rocca, and Alex Leary contributed to this article.
write to Alan Collison at [email protected] and Isabel Coles at [email protected]
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