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re: Children’s Hospital, Nurseries & Schools Destroyed Devastating Attack
Ukraine Ceasefire: Russian Declares Partial Ceasefire to Allow Residents of Two Ukrainian Cities to Evacuate
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The Guardian UK 5 MAR 2022.
PM fears 'radioactive clouds'
Mariupol to evacuate citizens after Russia declares temporary ceasefire
Civilians allowed to Ukrainian port city over five-hour period on Saturday
Russia’s defence ministry has announced a partial ceasefire to allow residents of two Ukrainian cities that were surrounded by Russian forces, including the strategic port city of Mariupol, to evacuate.
“Today, 5 March, from 10 am Moscow time (0700 GMT), the Russian side declares a regime of silence and opens humanitarian corridors for the exit of civilians from Mariupol and Volnovakha,” it said.
Civilians will be allowed to leave Mariupol between noon and 5pm (0900 - 1400 GMT), Russia’s RIA news agency quoted city authorities as saying.
The Mariupol city council said in a statement that civilians will be able to proceed towards the city of Zaporizhzhia and will be able to use specially arranged bus routes as well as their own cars. Saturday’s evacuation will be the first of several stages, it said.
“This is not an easy decision, but, as I have always said, Mariupol is not its streets or houses. Mariupol is its population, it is you and me,” mayor Vadim Boychenko was quoted as saying in the statement. With Russian troops surrounding the city, he said, “there is no other option but to allow residents - that is, you and me - to leave Mariupol safely,” he said.
Located on the Sea of Azov, the city of 450,000 represents a potential strategic advantage for Moscow’s invasion, connecting it to the Russian forces coming from annexed Crimea, as well as to the troops in the Donbas.
In Volnovakha, the attack is still so intense that dead bodies lie uncollected, those hiding in shelters are running out of food, and about 90% of the city is damaged by bombing, local MP Dmytro Lubinets said.
The cities are just two of many across Ukraine left reeling by a devastating campaign of shelling and artillery from Russian forces.
On Friday night Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy lashed out at Nato for ruling out a no-fly zone, saying it gives a “green light for further bombing of Ukrainian cities and villages,” as Russia intensifies strikes on civilian areas.
“All the people who die from this day forward will also die because of you, because of your weakness, because of your lack of unity,” the Ukrainian president said in an emotional address, where he praised the bravery of the Ukrainian resistance.
Nato said on Friday that a no-fly zone could provoke full-fledged war in Europe with nuclear-armed Russia, causing far greater loss of life.
“The only way to implement a no-fly zone is to send Nato fighter planes into Ukraine’s airspace, and then impose that no-fly zone by shooting down Russian planes,” Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg said. “If we did that, we’ll end up with something that could end in a full-fledged war in Europe, involving many more countries and causing much more human suffering.”
Zelenskiy is expected to press Washington for more help in a Zoom call with the full US Senate at 9.30am ET (1430 GMT) on Saturday.
On Friday, Russian ground forces in the south of Ukraine made an assault on the shipbuilding centre of Mykolaiv as they began their long-expected push west towards the key port of Odesa.
Shelling of some smaller towns, has intensified to the point where 80% of the town has been damaged or destroys by bombs, as civilians remain trapped in basements and bodies lie un-collected in the streets.
In Kyiv, the civilian death toll continued to mount. Seven people were killed, including two children, after a Russian airstrike hit a rural residential area in the Kyiv region on Friday, Ukrainian police said.
Local authorities in the northern city of Chernihiv raised the death toll from a missile strike on residential buildings on Thursday to 47. More than 840 children have been wounded in the war, Oleksiy Danilov, head of Ukraine’s security council said Friday. A day earlier, the Ukrainian government put the death toll among children at 28.
As people flee the crisis, a humanitarian disaster is unfolding, with more than 1 million people seeking refuge in western Ukraine and in neighbouring countries. The UN security council will hold an emergency meeting Monday on the humanitarian crisis triggered in Ukraine by the Russian invasion, diplomats said Friday.
In Russia, Putin’s crackdown on independent and critical voices has intensified, as the government moves to silence dissent tighten its grip on the flow of information. The Russian president introduced new laws and regulations cracking down on the free press and social media sites, prompting an exodus of media publishers from the country.
Putin has signed a bill into law introducing jail terms of up to 15 years for people publishing “false information” about the Russian army as Russia moves forward with its invasion of Ukraine. A number of outlets announced that they were ceasing Russian operations or removing coverage as a result.
The BBC, CNN, Bloomberg and CBC are among the outlets temporarily suspending operations or broadcasts in the country, saying the law “criminalises independent reporting in the country”.
Russia’s Novaya Gazeta newspaper said it will remove material on Russia’s military actions in Ukraine from its website. The Washington Post’s media reporter announced the paper will remove bylines and datelines from stories produced by their journalists in Russia, in a bid to protest correspondents’ safety.
‘Putin wants to kill us totally’: Ukrainians hold firm under bombardment
In Ukraine, a Sky News crew was evacuated back to the UK after journalists were shot during an ambush by a suspected Russian “death squad” on Monday.
Russian state media regulator Roskomnadzor has restricted access to Twitter, and the country has blocked Facebook, as well as the BBC, Voice of America and Deutsche Welle news sites. Putin also signed a bill that would allow fines or jail terms of up to three years for calling for sanctions against Russia.
Russia’s attack on Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, the largest of its kind in Europe, caused world wide alarm, and US officials say imminent danger continues as Russian troops close in on the country’s second-largest nuclear facility.
The Zaporizhzhia plant was seized by Russian forces on Friday, after an attack that started a fire close to one of its six reactors.
On Friday Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US envoy to the UN, said that “Putin must stop this madness and he must stop it now. Cooler heads must prevail. Russian forces are now 20 miles, and closing, from Ukraine’s second largest nuclear facility. So, this imminent danger continues. We narrowly avoided a disaster last night.”
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