LVIV, Ukraine (AP) — Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian civilians trying to flee to safety were forced to take shelter from Russian shelling that shelled towns in central, northern and southern Ukraine, leaving corpses on the streets. While Ukrainian officials described a “catastrophic” situation amid failed evacuation efforts in the Kiev suburbs, officials from both sides planned a third round of talks on Monday.
On the outskirts of the capital Kiev, a trolley stood upright next to corpses. A Russian rocket attack in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, has left a car crashing into a pile of rubble and killing another man. Ukrainian officials said the shelling only got worse on Sunday as darkness fell.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy vowed to continue fighting and urged his people in a televised address over the weekend to take to the streets to “expell this evil from our cities, from our country.”
“Instead of humanitarian corridors, they can only create bloody corridors,” Zelenskyy said later Sunday, referring to an effort to evacuate civilians disintegrated because of Russian bombing. “Today a family was murdered in Irpin. Husband, wife and two children. Right on the road. Like in a shooting gallery.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin said the attacks in Moscow could only be stopped if Kiev ceases hostilities. As he has often done, Putin blamed Ukraine for the war, telling Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday that Kiev must stop all hostilities and comply with “Russia’s known demands”.
Putin launched his invasion with a series of false accusations against Kiev, including that it is led by neo-Nazis who want to undermine Russia with the development of nuclear weapons.
As Russian attacks intensified, a brief reprieve in the southern port city of Mariupol collapsed. Heavy artillery struck residential areas in other major cities, local officials reported.
“There can be no ‘green corridors’, because only the sick brain of the Russians decides when to shoot and who,” Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s interior ministry, told Telegram.
On what is known in Orthodox Christianity as the Sunday of Forgiveness, Zelenskyy said Ukraine will never forgive the shelling of its homes, the killing of unarmed people and the destruction of its infrastructure.
“And God will not forgive, today nor tomorrow — never. And instead of a day of forgiveness, there will be a day of judgment. I’m sure of that,” he said in a video address.
The death toll remains unclear. The UN says it has only confirmed a few hundred civilian deaths, but also warned it is a huge number.
Presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovich described a “catastrophic” situation in the Kiev suburbs, Bucha, Hostomel and Irpin, where attempts to evacuate residents failed on Sunday. About eight civilians, including a family, were killed in Russian shelling in Irpin, Mayor Oleksander Markyshin said.
Video footage showed a grenade hitting a city street not far from a bridge used by people fleeing the fighting. A group of fighters could be seen trying to help the family. Arestovich said the government was doing everything it could to resume the evacuations.
“This is probably an attempt to break Ukrainian morale,” the British Ministry of Defense said of Russia’s tactics as the war entered its twelfth day on Monday. Fighting has forced 1.5 million people to flee the country in what the head of the UN refugee agency called “the fastest growing refugee crisis in Europe since World War II”.
British military officials compared Russia’s tactics to Moscow’s in Chechnya and Syria, where surrounded cities were pulverized by airstrikes and artillery.
Food, water, medicine and almost all other supplies were scarce in Mariupol, where Russian and Ukrainian forces had agreed to an 11-hour ceasefire that would allow the evacuation of civilians and wounded. But Russian attacks quickly closed off the humanitarian corridor, Ukrainian officials said.
The International Committee of the Red Cross estimated that 200,000 people tried to flee Mariupol.
The handful of residents who managed to flee the city before the humanitarian corridor was closed said the city of 430,000 had been devastated.
“We saw everything: houses on fire, all the people sitting in basements,” said Yelena Zamay, who fled to one of the self-proclaimed republics in eastern Ukraine held by pro-Russian separatists. “No communication, no water, no gas, no light, no water. There was nothing.”
Russia has made significant progress in southern Ukraine as it seeks to block access to the Sea of Azov. The capture of Mariupol could allow Moscow to establish a land corridor to Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014 in a move most other countries deemed illegal.
But much of the Russian advance has stalled, including an immense military convoy that has stood almost motionless for days north of Kiev.
A senior US defense official said on Sunday that the US estimates that about 95% of the Russian troops deployed around Ukraine are now in the country. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss military assessments, said Russian forces continue to advance in an effort to isolate Kiev, Kharkhiv and Chernihiv, but are meeting strong Ukrainian resistance.
Ukraine’s professional and volunteer fighters have fought with great tenacity, although the Russian army far surpasses them. Volunteers lined up in Kiev on Saturday to join the army. Ukraine also plans to fill an international legion with 20,000 volunteers from dozens of countries, although it was not clear how many were in Ukraine.
“The whole world is on the side of Ukraine today, not only in words but also in deeds,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Ukrainian television on Sunday evening.
The West has broadly supported Ukraine by offering aid and arms supplies and beating Russia with massive sanctions. But no NATO troops have been sent to Ukraine.
Zelenskyy has also criticized Western leaders for not responding to Russia with more violence. He reiterated a request for foreign protectors to impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine, which NATO has so far ruled out over concerns that such action would lead to a much wider war.
Zelenskyy also asked the United States and NATO countries to send more warplanes to Ukraine. But that idea is complicated by questions about the delivery of planes to Ukrainian pilots.
He later urged the West to tighten sanctions against Russia, saying that “the brutality of the aggressor is a clear signal” that existing sanctions are not enough.
Russia has become increasingly isolated in the days since the invasion began, cutting itself off from outside sources of information as sanctions bite deep into its economy. The ruble has fallen in value and dozens of multinationals have halted or drastically scaled back their work in the country.
On Sunday, American Express announced it would suspend operations in Russia and Russia-affiliated Belarus. Two of the so-called Big Four accounting firms, KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers, also said on Sunday that they would end their relationship with their Russia-based member firms.
TikTok announced on Sunday that Russian users will not be able to post new videos or see videos from elsewhere in the world. The company blamed Moscow’s new “fake news law,” which makes it illegal, among other things, to describe the fighting as an invasion. Netflix has also discontinued its service to Russia, but did not provide details.
Facebook and Twitter have already been blocked in Russia, as well as access to the websites of some major international media outlets. TikTok is part of the Chinese technology company ByteDance.
US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Congress is exploring ways to further isolate Russia from the global economy, including banning the import of its oil and energy products into the United States. Pelosi said in a letter to Democrats released late Sunday that the legislation under consideration would also repeal normal trade relations with Russia and Belarus and begin the process of banning Russia from the World Trade Organization.
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Associated Press reporters from around the world contributed to this report.
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Follow the AP’s coverage of the crisis in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
