Renewed efforts to rescue civilians from increasingly dire conditions in besieged and bombarded Ukrainian cities were underway Wednesday. Days of shelling have largely cut residents of the southern city of Mariupol off from the outside world and forced them to scavenge for food and water.
Meanwhile, the decommissioned Chornobyl nuclear site was knocked off the power grid Wednesday and forced to switch to generators. That raised alarm about the plant's ability to keep its nuclear fuel safely cool, though the UN nuclear watchdog said it saw "no critical impact on safety" from the power cut.
Authorities announced another ceasefire to allow civilians to escape from Mariupol and Sumy in the northeast, Enerhodar in the south, Volnovakha in the southeast, Izyum in the east and several towns in the region around the capital, Kyiv.
Previous attempts to establish safe evacuation corridors have largely failed due to attacks by Russian forces, and there were few details on Wednesday's new effort. It was not clear if anyone was able to leave Mariupol, but some people did start streaming out of Kyiv's suburbs, even as air raid sirens repeatedly went off in the capital and explosions could be heard there.
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.
'An ugly next few weeks'
The crisis is likely to get worse as Russian forces step up their bombardment of cities throughout the country in response to stronger than expected resistance from Ukrainian forces. 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 was likely to "grind down the Ukrainian military with no regard for civilian casualties."
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Britain's Defence Ministry said Wednesday that fighting continues northwest of Kyiv. The cities of Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Sumy and Mariupol are being heavily shelled and remain encircled by Russian forces.
Adding to the dire humanitarian conditions were concerns about the safety of the Chornobyl power plant, site of the world's worst nuclear disaster in 1986. Russian forces seized the plant in the early days of the invasion, and on Wednesday all its facilities were without power, the Ukrainian grid operator Ukrenerho said, citing the national nuclear regulator.
The diesel generators have fuel for 48 hours. Without power, the "parameters of nuclear and radiation safety" cannot be controlled, Ukrenerho said.
But the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency later said that while the development violates a "key safety pillar on ensuring uninterrupted power supply," it sees "no critical impact on safety."
Ukrainians scramble to escape, relief efforts xjmtzywhampered
14 hours agoDuration 2:40As Russian forces continue to lay siege to Ukrainian cities, residents are scrambling to escape. Those left behind are finding it difficult to access desperately needed aid because of drivers unwilling to travel into war zones, roadblocks and broken supply chains. 2:40
A reactor at Chornobyl exploded and caught fire in 1986. The plant was shut down in 2000, but the deserted site still stores spent nuclear fuel from Chornobyl and other nuclear plants around Ukraine. Experts have warned of catastrophic consequences if the war disrupts power to pumps that keep the radioactive fuel cool.
This was at least the third time that the Russian offensive raised the spectre of a nuclear disaster.
In southeastern Ukraine, Russian troops have been in control of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, the largest in Europe, since seizing it an attack on Friday that set a building on fire. It was later determined that no radiation was released.
Ukraine's Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko said on Facebook that about 500 Russian soldiers and 50 pieces of heavy equipment are inside the Zaporizhzhia station. He said the Ukrainian staff are "physical and emotionally exhausted."
Russian forces advance in south
Meanwhile, Russian forces placed military equipment on farms and amid residential buildings in the northern city of Chernihiv, Ukraine's general staff of the armed forces said in a statement. In the south, Russians dressed in civilian clothes are advancing on the city of Mykolaiv, a Black Sea shipbuilding centre of a half-million people, it said.
The Ukrainian military is building up defences in cities in the north, south and east, and forces around Kyiv are "holding the line" against the Russian offensive, the general staff said.
Ukraine stadium transformed into refugee centre
14 hours agoDuration 2:21Adrienne Arsenault visits a soccer stadium in Lviv, Ukraine converted into a refugee centre to accommodate the mass exodus of Ukrainians fleeing the country. 2:21
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.
'Crisis' in Kyiv region
A series of air raid alerts Wednesday morning urged residents of the capital to go to bomb shelters amid fears of incoming missiles. Associated Press reporters later heard explosions.
The all-clear was given each time, but the intermittent alerts have kept people on edge. Kyiv has been relatively quiet in recent days, though Russian artillery has pounded the outskirts of the city.
On the outskirts, police officers and soldiers helped elderly residents from their homes on Tuesday. People crowded together under a destroyed bridge before crossing a river on slippery wooden boards as they tried to escape Irpin, a town of 60,000 that has been targeted by Russian shelling.
The crisis is growing in the capital for civilians, with the situation particularly critical 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.
Amid the bombardments, authorities have tried repeatedly to evacuate civilians, but many attempts have been thwarted by Russian shelling.
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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.
That corridor was to reopen for 12 hours on Wednesday, with the buses that brought people southwest to the city of Poltava the day before returning to pick up more refugees, regional administration chief Dmytro Zhyvytskyy said.
Priority was being given to pregnant women, women with children, the elderly and the disabled.
Mariupol surrounded
In the south, Russian troops have advanced deep along Ukraine's coastline in an attempt to establish a land bridge to Crimea, which Moscow seized from Ukraine in 2014. That has left Mariupol encircled by Russian forces.
Nearly half of the city's population of 430,000 is hoping to flee. Corpses lie in the streets, and people break into stores in search of food and melt snow for water. Thousands huddle in basements, sheltering from the Russian shells pounding this strategic port on the Azov Sea.
On Tuesday, an attempt to evacuate civilians and deliver badly needed food, water and medicine through a designated safe corridor failed, with Ukrainian officials saying Russian forces had fired on the convoy before it reached the city.
Natalia Mudrenko, the highest-ranking woman at Ukraine's UN Mission, told the Security Council that the people of Mariupol have "been effectively taken hostage," by the siege. Her voice shook with emotion as she described how a six-year-old died shortly after her mother was killed by Russian shelling. "She was alone in the last moments of her life," she said.
