Russia makes new offer of evacuation routes in five besieged Ukrainian cities including Kyiv

Russia has promised to allow five humanitarian corridors to be formed in Ukraine to let people flee major cities under attack by Vladimir Putin’s forces.

The firing of weapons will stop from 0700 GMT on Wednesday, Russian news agency Tass cited a senior official as saying.

Mikhail Mizintsev, head of the Russian National Defence Control Centre, said the corridors will lead out of Kyiv, Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv, and Mariupol.

He was quoted as saying: “Given the deteriorating humanitarian situation ... and in order to ensure the safety of civilians and foreign citizens, Russia will observe a regime of silence from 10 am Moscow time on March 9 and is ready to provide humanitarian corridors.”

However, it comes after several previous attempts to establish safe exits out of cities and towns under siege have failed.

Mr Mizintsev claimed that Ukrainian authorities had agreed to only one civilian evacuation route out of 10 that were proposed.

Information about the corridors to be allowed on Wednesday will be sent to Ukrainian deputy PM Iryna Vereshchuk, Mr Mizintsev added.

Earlier, Ms Vereshchuk said civilians were unable to be evacuated from Mariupol, a port city on the Black Sea coast, because Russian troops had been firing at a Ukrainian convoy carrying aid to the city that was to carry civilians on its way out.

The Russian military has denied firing on convoys and claimed that the Ukrainian side was blocking the evacuation effort.

Mariupol was in a “catastrophic situation” as it has been cut from water, power and communications, Ms Vereshchuk said in a televised briefing.

The city’s authorities have been digging mass graves, as corpses of soldiers and civilians have laid on the streets.

A young girl died of dehydration in Mariupol, in the first known case of death by dehydration in Ukraine since the Second World War, Ms Vereshchuk said.

One humanitarian corridor has been successful in evacuating thousands of people.

Ukraine said some 5,000 people – including 1,700 foreign students – were evacuated from Sumy in eastern Ukraine.

President Volodymyr Zelensky has called for Ukraine’s allies in Nato to impose a no-fly zone over the country to allow refugees safe passage to neighbouring countries.

More than 2 million people have fled Ukraine into safer nations in Europe, according to the United Nations.

But the Ukrainian president’s request for a no-fly zone to allow more people to flee urban areas hit hard by Russian troops has been rejected a number of times by western nations – over fears that such a move could spark a wider conflict.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on Tuesday that even a limited no-fly zone over humanitarian corridors could still escalate the war and possibly lead the United States into war with Russia.

Ms Psaki told reporters that any span of a no-fly zone would require the shooting down of Russian military aircraft if the Kremlin and its forces violated the rules.

She added: “We would still have concerns about that being an escalatory action that could lead us into a war with Russia, which is not something the president intends to do.”

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