A Russian attack severely damaged a maternity hospital in the besieged port city of Mariupol, Ukrainian officials said Wednesday, as citizens trying to escape shelling on the outskirts of Kyiv streamed toward the capital amid warnings from the West that Moscow's invasion is about to take a more brutal and indiscriminate turn.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote on Twitter that there were "people, children under the wreckage" of the hospital and called the strike an "atrocity." Authorities said they were trying to establish how many people had been killed or wounded.
Mariupol's city council said on its social media site that the damage was "colossal."
Mariupol. Direct strike of Russian troops at the maternity hospital. People, children are under the wreckage. Atrocity! How much longer will the world be an accomplice ignoring terror? Close the sky right now! Stop the killings! You have power but you seem to be losing humanity. <a href=https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/”https://t.co/FoaNdbKH5k”>pic.twitter.com/FoaNdbKH5k
—@ZelenskyyUa
Meanwhile, civilians trying to escape the Kyiv suburb of Irpin were forced to make their way across the slippery wooden planks of a makeshift bridge, because the Ukrainians blew up the concrete span to Kyiv days ago to slow the Russian advance.
With sporadic gunfire echoing behind them, firefighters dragged an elderly man to safety in a wheelbarrow, a child gripped the hand of a helping soldier, and a woman inched her way along cradling a fluffy cat inside her winter coat. On the far side of the bridge, they all trudged past a crashed van with the words "Our Ukraine" written in the dust coating its windows.
"We have a short window of time at the moment," said Yevhen Nyshchuk, a member of Ukraine's territorial defence forces. "Even if there is a ceasefire right now, there is a high risk of shells falling at any moment."
Russia attacks stymie evacuations
Authorities announced the new ceasefire on Wednesday to allow civilians to escape from towns around the capital, Kyiv, as well as the southern cities of Mariupol, Enerhodar and Volnovakha, Izyum in the east, and Sumy in the northeast. Previous attempts to establish safe evacuation corridors have largely failed due to attacks by Russian forces.
One evacuation did appear successful, with Ukrainian authorities saying Tuesday that 5,000 civilians, including 1,700 foreign students, managed to escape from Sumy, a city of a quarter-million people that has seen intense shelling.
It was not immediately clear on Wednesday whether anyone was able to leave other cities, but people streamed out of Kyiv's suburbs, many headed for the city centre, even as explosions were heard in the capital and air raid sirens sounded repeatedly. From there, they planned to board trains bound for western Ukrainian regions not under attack.
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In Mariupol, local authorities hurried to bury the dead in a mass grave. City workers dug a trench some 25 metres long at one of the city's old cemeteries and made a sign of the cross as they pushed bodies wrapped in carpets or bags over the edge.
Thousands of people are thought to have been killed, both civilians and soldiers, in nearly two weeks of fighting since President Vladimir Putin's forces invaded.
The UN estimates that more than two million people have fled the country, the biggest exodus of refugees in Europe since the end of the Second World War.
Chornobyl concerns
The fighting cut power to the decommissioned Chornobyl nuclear site, raising safety concerns about the spent fuel that is stores at the site and must be kept cool. But the UN nuclear watchdog said it saw "no critical impact on safety" from the loss of power.
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The crisis in Ukraine is likely to get worse as Russian forces step up their bombardment of cities in response to stronger than expected resistance. Russian losses have been "far in excess" of what Putin and his generals expected, CIA Director William Burns said Tuesday.
An intensified push by Russian forces could mean "an ugly next few weeks," Burns told a congressional committee, warning that Putin is likely to "grind down the Ukrainian military with no regard for civilian casualties."
Britain's Defence Ministry said Wednesday that fighting continued northwest of Kyiv. The cities of Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Sumy and Mariupol were being heavily shelled and remained encircled by Russian forces.
Russian forces advance in south
Russian forces are placing military equipment on farms and amid residential buildings in the northern city of Chernihiv, Ukraine's military said. In the south, Russians dressed in civilian clothes are advancing on the city of Mykolaiv, a Black Sea shipbuildixjmtzywng centre of a half-million people, it said.
The Ukrainian military, meanwhile, is building up defences in cities in the north, south and east, and forces around Kyiv are "holding the line" against the Russian offensive, authorities said.
That resistance is stiffer than many expected — and Western nations are rushing now to bolster their force. Ukraine's president has pleaded repeatedly for warplanes to counter Russia's significant air power, but Western countries have disagreed over how best to do that, amid concerns it could expand the war beyond Ukraine.
Late on Tuesday, Poland offered to give the U.S. 28 MiG-29 fighter planes for Ukraine's use. U.S. officials said that proposal was "untenable," but that they would continue to consult with Poland and other NATO allies.
In addition to material support for Ukraine, Western countries have sought to pressure Russia through a series of punishing sanctions. On Tuesday, U.S. President Joe Biden upped the ante further, saying the U.S. would ban all Russian oil imports, even if it meant rising costs for Americans.
Air raid alerts in Kyiv
A series of air raid alerts Wednesday morning urged residents of the capital to go to bomb shelters amid fears of incoming missiles. Explosions were later heard.
In Irpin, a town of 60,000, police officers and soldiers helped elderly residents from their homes. One man was hoisted out of a damaged structure on a makeshift stretcher, while another was pushed toward Kyiv in a shopping cart. Fleeing residents said they had been without power and water for the past four days.
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The crisis is growing in the capital for civilians, with the situation particularly dire in the city's suburbs, said Kyiv regional administration head Oleksiy Kuleba.
"Russia is artificially creating a humanitarian crisis in the Kyiv region, frustrating the evacuation of people and continuing shelling and bombing small communities," he said.
