A glimmer of hope for civilians stranded in Mariupol. In a press release published on Wednesday evening March 30, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced that it had decided to set up a “silent regime” from Thursday at 9 a.m. (French time) in order to evacuate civilians via a humanitarian corridor to Zaporizhia. Qome 160,000 civilians are still stuck in the besieged city, holed up in shelters without electricity and lacking food and water, according to testimonies. Follow our live.
Ukrainian mistrust. “We don’t believe anyone, not a single beautiful phrase”Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in the evening, adding that Russian forces were regrouping to attack the Donbass region. “We will not give in. We will fight for every meter of our territory”he promised.
Negotiations stalled. Returning to the announcements made by Moscow after talks in Istanbul on Tuesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he could not “to report anything very promising or some kind of breakthrough”. “At the moment we cannot talk about progress and we are not going to do so”he insisted.
More than four million refugees. In five weeks of war, more than four million Ukrainians have been forced to flee their country, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. Europe had not seen such waves of refugees since the Second World War.