A promised ceasefire in the besieged port city of Mariupol collapsed amid scenes of terror but a pro-Russian official said safe-passage corridors would open again for city residents on Sunday, while Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that the ongoing resistance is putting Ukrainian statehood in jeopardy and likened the West’s sanctions on Russia to “declaring war”.
With the Kremlin’s rhetoric growing fiercer and a reprieve from fighting dissolving, Russian troops continued to shell encircled cities and the number of Ukrainians forced from their country grew to 1.4 million.
By nighttime on Saturday, Russian forces had intensified their shelling of Mariupol, while dropping powerful bombs on residential areas of Chernihiv, a city north of Kyiv, Ukrainian officials said.
Bereft mothers mourned slain children, wounded soldiers were fitted with tourniquets and doctors worked by the light of their cellphones as bleakness and desperation pervaded. Crowds of men lined up in the capital to join the Ukrainian military.
The government has ordered men between the ages of 18 and 60 to stay and be available to fight. Some, like Volodymyr Onysko, have volunteered. “We know why we are here. We know why we defend our country,” Onysko told Britain’s Sky News. “We know what we are doing, and that’s why we will win.”
Eduard Basurin, the head of the military in separatist-held Donetsk territory, said safe passage corridors for residents of two cities.—AP
