© Emilio Morenatti
Ukrainian women are seen sitting in a van as gunfire is heard nearby, as people flee from Irpin, outside Kiev, Ukraine, Monday, March 7, 2022. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)
Little progress has been made in establishing safe corridors for civilians to flee the fighting. A senior Ukrainian official said both sides had agreed to a 12-hour ceasefire on Tuesday to evacuate civilians from a strategic city in the country’s east.
Meanwhile, Russian aircraft continued to shell cities in eastern and central Ukraine overnight, according to Ukrainian authorities. Shells rocked the suburbs of the capital, Kiev.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged people to continue resisting the attack, which United Nations officials say has forced more than 1.7 million people to flee the country. The Ukrainian foreign minister said that more than 20,000 people from 52 countries had offered to fight in Ukraine.
As the war entered its 12th day, shortages of food, water, heating and medicine were becoming more serious in Ukraine.
Here are some crucial elements of the war:
HAS PROGRESS BEEN MADE IN SAFE EVACUATIONS?
The Russian coordination center for humanitarian efforts in Ukraine said Russia would begin a ceasefire at 10 a.m. Moscow time (0700 GMT) on Tuesday to allow civilians to flee through special corridors that Russia said were agreed with Ukrainian authorities. Russian media reported.
Most of those routes would lead to Russia either directly or through Belarus, according to officials in Moscow. However, the Russian ambassador to the United Nations suggested that humanitarian routes from Kiev and other cities would allow people to choose where they wanted to go.
Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said on Tuesday that both sides had agreed to a ceasefire from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Ukrainian time (0700-1900 GMT) to evacuate civilians from the eastern city. of Sumi. Among the people to be evacuated from Sumy were foreign students from India and China, she noted.
The Russian Defense Ministry has said that civilians from Sumy, Mariupol and Kiev will be allowed to leave.
In the southern port of Mariupol, an estimated 200,000 people – nearly half the population – want to leave. Local hospitals suffer from severe shortages of antibiotics and painkillers.
Representatives from Ukraine and Russia on Monday held their third round of direct talks since the start of the invasion on February 24. The foreign ministers of both countries were scheduled to meet Thursday in Turkey, according to the country’s foreign minister.
WHAT ELSE HAPPENS ON THE GROUND?
In the capital, soldiers and volunteers have built hundreds of checkpoints to protect the city of nearly 4 million people, often with sandbags, stacked tires and barbed wire.
A Russian general has been killed in the fighting in Ukraine’s second-largest city, according to Ukraine’s military intelligence agency. He was identified as Maj. Gen. Vitaly Gerasimov, the second Russian general to be killed since the start of the invasion, according to reports. He had fought with Russian forces in Syria and Chechnya and participated in the takeover of Crimea in 2014, according to the report. It was not possible to confirm his death independently. Russia did not comment on this.
The mayor of Lviv said the city in the country’s far west is struggling to provide shelter and food for the tens of thousands of people who have fled there from war-torn regions. More than 200,000 Ukrainians displaced from their homes are now in Lviv, filling sports arenas, schools, hospitals and churches.
Russian aircraft bombed cities in the east and center of the country overnight, according to Ukrainian authorities. The attacks continued in the suburbs of the capital, Kiev. In Sumy and Okhtirka, east of the capital and close to the Russian border, bombs fell on residential buildings and a power plant was destroyed, according to a regional leader. Bombs also fell on fuel depots in two other towns.
Russian troops have made significant gains in southern Ukraine, though they are stalled in other regions. A senior US official said several countries were considering whether to provide the planes Zelenskyy has requested.
HOW MANY PEOPLE HAVE DIED?
It has been difficult to determine exactly how many people have lost their lives in this conflict. The UN human rights office said Monday it has confirmed the deaths of at least 406 civilians, with 801 injured as of Sunday, but believes the true figures are likely to be much higher.
The World Health Organization says it has confirmed six attacks in which six health workers have been killed and 11 injured.
The exodus of Ukrainian refugees to neighboring countries such as Poland, Romania and Moldova continues. The number of people who have left Ukraine since the invasion began exceeds 1.7 million people, according to the UN refugee agency.
OVERALL IMPACT
Rising prices for crude oil and other crucial raw materials, such as wheat used in subsidized bread and noodles, have hit international markets. The situation remains uncertain and investors are looking for safe-haven assets in the face of mounting sanctions against Russia.
Fears are growing that the Russian invasion of Ukraine will affect already tight oil supplies. Russia is one of the world’s largest energy exporters, and prices rose further on the possibility that the United States could ban imports of Russian oil.
More and more multinational companies are cutting off Russia’s access to crucial financial services, technology and various consumer products in response to Western economic sanctions and global outrage over the war. One of those that stopped its services in Russia due to the sanctions was the popular streaming video service Netflix.
In the Middle East, the war in Ukraine has aggravated regional divisions due to Moscow’s involvement in recent years in the war in Syria and between military factions in Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen, where its ally Iran has influence.
Although several countries have sent weapons and military equipment to Ukrainian forces fighting Russia, Western countries have rejected Ukrainian calls to impose a no-fly zone over the country. There are concerns that such a move would drastically escalate the conflict.