The Guardian reports that officials in Ukraine’s strategic port city of Mariupol have said they will start to evacuate civilians after Russian forces announced a temporary ceasefire.
Evacuations were due to begin at 11am local time (0900 GMT), but the city council said Russian forces were not observing the agreed ceasefire along the whole length of the evacuation route and that negotiations were ongoing.
In an earlier statement the council called on “all drivers leaving the city, to contribute as much as possible to the evacuation of the civilian population – take people with you, fill vehicles as much as possible”.
The Russian defence ministry said its units had opened humanitarian corridors near Mariupol and Volnovakha, a much smaller city 40 miles (65 km) to the north.
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 Ukrainian government said the plan was to evacuate about 200,000 people from Mariupol and 15,000 from Volnovakha, with the Red Cross as the ceasefire’s guarantor. An adviser to Ukraine’s interior ministry said there would be agreements on humanitarian corridors for other cities.
Mariupol and Volnovakha are just two of many cities across Ukraine left reeling by a devastating campaign of shelling and artillery from Russian forces. The Russian defence ministry said on Saturday a broad offensive would continue elsewhere in Ukraine.
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,involving many more countries and causing much more human suffering.”
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 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”.
Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta 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.
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.
The following was the late night summary:
Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, the largest of its kind in Europe, was seized by Russian forces on Friday, after an attack that started a fire close to one of its six reactors. No release of radiation was reported, but Ukrainian officials said workers had not been able to check all the safety infrastructure in the wake of the attack.
An emergency of the UN security council was summoned following the attack on the Zaporizhzhia NPP. The US ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said the world narrowly averted a “nuclear catastrophe” and condemned Russia’s actions as “reckless” and “dangerous”.
Seven people were killed, including two children, after a Russian air strike hit a rural residential area in the Kyiv region on Friday, Ukrainian police said. Police said the strike hit the village of Markhalivka, around 6 miles from the southwestern outskirts of the Ukrainian capital.
The Ukrainian city of Mariupol has no water, heat or electricity and is running out of food after coming under attack by Russian forces for the past five days, its mayor said in a televised appeal. He called for a humanitarian corridor to evacuate civilians from the south-eastern port city.
Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg warned the days to come are “likely to be worse”, calling Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “the worst military aggression in Europe for decades”. But he stressed Nato was a “defensive alliance” and not seeking a war with Russia.
Nato foreign ministers discussed a “no-fly zone” over Ukraine but agreed that Nato planes should not operate over Ukrainian airspace, Stoltenberg said. He also said Nato had evidence Russia was using cluster bombs.
Russia’s parliament passed a law imposing a jail term of up to 15 years for spreading intentionally “fake” information about the armed forces. Russia’s Novaya Gazeta newspaper said it will remove material on Russia’s military actions in Ukraine from its website.
The BBC is temporarily suspending the work of all its journalists and staff in Russia. BBC director general Tim Davie said the new legislation appeared to “criminalise the process of independent journalism”.
Russia’s media watchdog Roskomnadzor said it had decided to block access to the Facebook network in Russia. It added that there had been 26 cases of discrimination against Russian media by Facebook since October 2020.
More than 1.2m people have fled Ukraine into neighbouring countries since Russia launched its full-scale invasion on 24 February, the UN said, including about half a million children.
The UN human rights council overwhelmingly voted to create a top-level investigation into violations committed following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with 32 members of the 47-seat council in favour and only Russia and Eritrea voting against.