A rare ray of hope in a city in chaos. Four evacuation buses managed to leave the port of Mariupol on Thursday, April 21, announced Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk. The day beforea humanitarian corridor in principle negotiated to allow the evacuation of civilians from Mariupol had “not worked”, according to the same source. She had blamed the Russians for violating the ceasefire and blocking the buses, while Moscow had accused “the Kyiv authorities for cynically scuttling this humanitarian operation”. HASNo evacuation corridor had been set up in Ukraine since Saturday. Follow our live.
“Critical” situation in Mariupol. “We are ready to leave Mariupol with the help of a third party”armed with weapons, “in order to save the people entrusted to our care”said on Thursday, a commander of the Azov Battalion, one of two last combat units in Mariupol. “The situation is difficult, even critical”does he have admitted, while several hundred civilians, lacking food and water, are entrenched in the Azovstal factory, according to the Ukrainian authorities.
kyiv offers to negotiate on Mariupol. Ukraine said it was open on Wednesday to a “special negotiating session” on the fate of this strategic city. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky mentions“about a thousand civilians, women and children” and “hundreds injured”.
The fighting are continuing. The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense reported on Wednesday that “assault attempts” on the localities of Sulyguivka and Dibrivne, in the Kharkiv region, as well as on Rubizhne and Severodonetsk, in the Luhansk region. “The situation is getting more complicated every hour”, wrote the governor of Luhansk, Serguiï Gaïdaï, renewing his calls for civilians to evacuate. The bombardments also intensified in the south of the country.
Pedro Sanchez in Kyiv. The Spanish Prime Minister arrived in the Ukrainian capital on Thursday morning with his Danish counterpart Mette Frederiksen. They are both due to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, according to the Spanish government. Emmanuel Macron is ready to do the same if it has “a substantive interest”explained the spokesman of the government, Gabriel Attal, Thursday, on franceinfo.