Ukraine hopes a “humanitarian corridor” will be opened successfully for civilians to leave the besieged southern port city of Mariupol on Friday, Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said.
Residents have been cowering under fire, and without power or water, in the strategic ally important city of over 400,000 people for more than a week and attempts to arrange a local ceasefire and safe passage out have failed repeatedly.
“We hope it will work today,” Vereshchuk said in a televised statement in which she said she hoped several other humanitarian corridors would also be opened.
Russia’s defence ministry said it would open humanitarian corridors from Kyiv, Sumy, Kharkiv, Mariupol and Chernihiv.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that not a single civilian had been able to leave Mariupol on Thursday, a day after an attack on a hospital which he said killed three people.
He blamed Russian shelling for the failure of the evacuation attempt.
Russia blames Ukraine for the collapse of humanitarian corridors and denies targeting civilians. Moscow calls its actions in Ukraine a “special operation” to disarm Ukraine and unseat leaders it calls neo-Nazis.