KYIV, Ukraine — Russia and Ukraine agreed Saturday to open humanitarian corridors to evacuate civilians from the besieged cities of Mariupol and Volnovakha in eastern Ukraine, but the convoys stalled as Kyiv accused Moscow of failing to provide security guarantees along the entire route.
The corridors, which Ukrainian officials say will also be used to supply the two cities with food, medicine and other necessities, were supposed to be the first tangible outcome of Thursday’s talks between Russian and Ukrainian representatives in Belarus. Although the corridors were supposed to open at 9 a.m. Kyiv time, Ukrainian officials said the convoys did not leave Mariupol. They also said that Russia was moving troops closer to the city, violating the ceasefire agreement.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine, which US officials predicted would lead to the capture of the capital Kyiv within three days, ran into fierce Ukrainian resistance, resulting in heavy Russian losses in troops and equipment. The Ukrainian General Staff said on Saturday that it was holding positions on most fronts and launching a counteroffensive. To compensate for these failures, Russia has increasingly resorted to indiscriminate bombing and shelling of residential areas, especially in Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Sumy and Mariupol.
About 200,000 residents of Mariupol and 15,000 residents of Volnovakha are expected to use the corridors to leave the two cities besieged and constantly shelled by Russian troops, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said.
In Kherson, the only regional capital of Ukraine occupied by Russia during the nine days of the war, mass protests broke out on the city’s central square on Saturday against the occupying forces. The regional administration building was draped with a huge Ukrainian flag, and flag-waving protesters chanted “shame” on the Russian military, some of whom fired into the air in an attempt to disperse the rally.
Kherson is a predominantly Russian-speaking city. One of the reasons Russian President Vladimir Putin cited as justification for the war with Ukraine was alleged discrimination against Russian-speaking residents of Ukraine. Most of the Russian shelling that destroyed residential buildings was directed against civilians in Russian-speaking areas of the country.
Talks between Russia and Ukraine were supposed to resume as early as Saturday, the third round of talks since Moscow’s February 24 invasion of Ukraine.
According to the Ukrainian negotiator, the two delegations will meet again only if there is progress in the implementation of humanitarian corridors and other agreements reached in previous sessions. He did not expect a quick ceasefire, saying that Russian President Vladimir Putin believes he is winning, a stance he said will not change until the West bans Russian oil and gas imports. “We have no illusions here, we are sitting at the table in front of people who want to exterminate us,” the negotiator said.
Mariupol is a large industrial city and port on the Sea of Azov with a population of about 400,000 people. Volnovakha is a much smaller town to the north. Both belong to the Donetsk region of Ukraine, which Russia no longer recognizes as part of Ukraine after recognizing the independence of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic, a state that Moscow created over one-third of that region in 2014.
The body of a teenager mortally wounded by gunfire in a maternity hospital converted into a medical ward in Mariupol, Ukraine, this week.
Photo: Yevgeny Maloletka/Associated Press
A building damaged by shelling this week in Mariupol, Ukraine.
Photo: Yevgeny Maloletka/Associated Press
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s decision on Friday not to interfere in Russia’s air operations over Ukraine was a sign of weakness and a split in the Western alliance, which has “hypnotized itself” with fear of Moscow, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a televised address. He spoke after NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg ruled out the alliance’s participation in hostilities in Ukraine, as such a move could provoke a full-scale war between NATO members and Russia, which has an extensive arsenal of nuclear weapons.
“All the people who die from this day will also die because of you,” Zelensky said, adding that NATO’s refusal to act gave Moscow the “green light” to bomb Ukrainian cities and villages.
According to Ukrainian authorities, the corridor between Mariupol and the Ukrainian city of Zaporozhye was to be open from 9:00 to 16:00 Kyiv time on Saturday, with another possibility of travel on subsequent days.
Ukrainian forces are patrolling Odessa, Ukraine’s largest port, this week.
Photo: Armed Forces of Ukraine / REUTERS
A Ukrainian soldier rests while patrolling on the outskirts of Kyiv on Friday.
Photo: Manu Brabo for The Wall Street Journal
“Our main task has always been to protect our people. At a time when our hometown is under merciless shelling by the occupiers, there is no other way out but to allow its residents to leave Mariupol safely,” Mayor Vadim Boychenko said on Saturday in a message to his voters. He also thanked the defenders of the city for the nine-day repulse of the Russian attacks.
Deputy Prime Minister Ms. Vereshchuk said that the ceasefire is being coordinated through the International Committee of the Red Cross. According to her, the columns will be headed by representatives of the ICRC. Ukraine is working on a similar evacuation of civilians from besieged Chernihiv and Sumy, Russian-occupied Kherson and cities northwest of Kyiv, she said.
On Saturday, Russia continued shelling residential areas of Kharkov, Sumy and other Ukrainian cities. A Russian shell hit train cars in the town of Irpen, west of Kyiv, making it impossible for local residents to evacuate by rail, local authorities said. Heavy fighting continued in the area.
One of Ukraine’s ceasefire negotiators, presidential adviser Mykhailo Podoliak, told a press conference in Lvov on Friday that Russia is looking for a diplomatic solution because it miscalculated the mood of the Ukrainian people. According to him, Moscow went to war thinking that only about 20% of Ukrainians were hostile to Russia, and the remaining 80% would greet their Russian brothers with flowers. In fact, he added, about 98% of Ukrainians are determined to fight the invasion.
In a sign that Ukrainians are uniting against the Russian occupiers, more than 66,000 Ukrainian men living abroad have returned to the country to take up arms since the start of the war, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov said.
Despite setbacks in the north, Russian forces have made significant gains in southern Ukraine, advancing from the Crimean peninsula to capture the city of Kherson, the city of Energodar, home to Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, and the cities of Berdyansk and Melitopol on the coast of the Sea of Azov. Heavy fighting continued throughout the night on the outskirts of Nikolaev, a Black Sea city on the way to Odessa, Ukraine’s largest port. Russian officials say their military operation is going according to plan and achieving the desired results.
Russia drew widespread condemnation after its forces set fire to the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant in Energodar before taking control of the area, according to local authorities and international observers. This raised fears that Moscow’s increasingly indiscriminate war could lead to a global environmental catastrophe. Another nuclear power plant is located near Nikolaev.
Mr. Podolyak said that Kyiv had offered Russia to mutually agree not to conduct hostilities in zones within 30 kilometers of nuclear reactors. According to him, Russia did not accept this proposal.
The people of Kiev are building fortifications on Friday in the capital.
Photo: Christopher Ochikone for The Wall Street Journal
People wait to board a train to the Polish border on Friday in Lvov, Ukraine.
Photo: Yustina Melnikevich/MAPS for The Wall Street Journal
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, in an interview with three European newspapers, called for the creation of a system for ensuring the safety of Ukrainian nuclear power plants and controlling radiation levels, adding that Russia’s attack on nuclear power plants endangered the entire continent.
The fire, which was put out on Friday morning, broke out at the training center of the Zaporizhia power plant, the Emergency Situations Service of Ukraine said. According to officials, none of the station’s six reactors were damaged, and there was no radiation leakage. Both sides said that Russian troops at the complex did not interfere with the work of Ukrainian personnel at the plant.
The skirmish heightened fears of a repeat of the 1986 nuclear disaster at Chernobyl, when a huge plume of radioactive vapor surrounded the world and rendered the region around the plant uninhabitable. Ukrainian authorities said Russian troops seized the decommissioned Chernobyl nuclear power plant, which is located near the border with Belarus, on the first day of the war and have been holding staff hostage ever since, preventing rotation.
A senior US defense official said on Friday that since February 26, the US has supplied Ukraine with $240 million worth of weapons taken from US military stockpiles. US officials said the shipments included Javelin anti-tank weapons, Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, small arms and ammunition.
The administration is asking Congress to provide additional military support to Ukraine. The US is working closely with the UK, Canada, Lithuania and Poland to coordinate security assistance to Ukraine, the Defense Department spokesman added. In total, 14 countries provide such security assistance to Ukraine.
Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at [email protected]
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