Ukraine makes new attempt to get civilians out of Mariupol, other cities

Rimma, a three-year-old girl evacuated from Mariupol area, holds a cat in a bus before leaving a refugee camp in the settlement of Bezymennoye for the territory of Russia during Ukraine-Russia conflict in the Donetsk region, Ukraine on March 8. REUTERS/Alexander Ermochenko

Ukraine will on Wednesday try to evacuate civilians through six "humanitarian corridors", including from the besieged southern port city of Mariupol, Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said. She said in a video statement that Ukrainian armed forces had agreed to stop firing in those areas from 9am until 9pm (0700-1900 GMT)and urged Russian forces to fulfil their commitment to local ceasefires. She said the corridors that would open would go from Mariupol to Zaporizhzhia; Enerhodar to Zaporizhzhia; Sumy to Poltava; Izyum to Lozova; Volnovakha to Pokrovsk; and from severaltowns around Kyiv which she identified as Vorzel, Borodyanka, Bucha, Irpin and Hostomel to the capital. "I appeal to the Russian Federation: You have undertaken official public commitments to cease fire from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. We have had negative experiences when the commitments that were undertaken did not work," Vereshchuk said. She was referring to several failed attempts to open safe corridors for trapped civilians in the past few days. Each side blamed the other for their failure. About 5,000 people did however manage to flee the northeastern city of Sumy through a humanitarian corridor on Tuesday, the regional governor said.