Residents of Ukraine’s Mariupol fleeing on foot, says governor

A cat travelling with a couple hoping to flee Ukraine is seen at the main train station in Lviv after arriving by train from Kyiv.

• Putin accuses Ukraine of ‘war crimes’ in Macron call: Kremlin Some residents of Ukraine’s besieged city of Mariupol have resorted to escaping the blockade on foot as official evacuation efforts have mostly failed due to ongoing shelling by Russian forces, the region’s governor said yesterday. Some 400,000 people have been trapped in the strategic port city for over two weeks, sheltering from heavy bombardment that has severed central supplies of electricity, heating and water, according to local authorities. Russia denies bombing residential areas or targeting civilians. Speaking on national television, Donetsk governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said that around 35,000 had managed to leave the city in recent days, many leaving on foot or in convoys of private cars. “The way out of blockaded Mariupol begins with residents getting out either on foot or in their own transport,” he said, adding that some cars were leaving without enough fuel to reach the nearest villages or towns. Kyrylenko said that near-constant shelling was preventing the authorities from opening humanitarian corridors to supply aid and food to the city and to evacuate women, children and those most in need. Russia and Ukraine have traded blame for the failure of the corridors. The city council warned that Mariupol was running out of its last reserves of food and water last Sunday, and has said it is unable to properly treat or tally casualties from the shelling. The Ukrainian authorities estimate more than 2,500 residents have been killed in Mariupol since the start of the war on February 24. Meanwhile, the city’s authorities said yesterday that a Russian strike on a theatre sheltering civilians badly wounded one person but did not kill anyone. “According to initial information, there are no dead. But there is information about one person gravely wounded,” the city council said on Telegram in the first casualty tally since the strike on Wednesday. “Rubble clearing is ongoing,” it said. The city council said “up to 1,000 people”, mostly women and children, were sheltering inside at the time of the attack. The country’s ombudswoman Lyudmyla Denisova said earlier a bomb shelter underneath the Drama Theatre had survived the impact. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that 130 people had been saved after the bombing, but hundreds were still beneath the rubble. Ukraine has accused Russia of knowingly hitting the theatre, though Moscow has denied this. The strike on the theatre drew international condemnations. Satellite images of the Drama Theatre taken days before the attack, shared by private company Maxar, clearly showed the word “DETI” – or “children” in Russian – written on the ground on either side of the building. Russian President Vladimir Putin has accused Kyiv of “war crimes” in a call with his French counterpart, saying that Moscow was doing “everything possible” to avoid civilian deaths in Ukraine. “Attention was drawn to the numerous war crimes committed daily by the Ukrainian security forces,” the Kremlin said of the call between Putin and Emmanuel Macron yesterday. “In particular massive rocket and artillery attacks on the cities of Donbas,” the Kremlin added, referring to Ukraine’s Russian-speaking east, part of which is controlled by pro-Moscow separatists. Putin told Macron that the Russian army was “doing everything possible to safeguard the lives of peaceful civilians, including by organising humanitarian corridors for their safe evacuation”, the Kremlin said. Both leaders also discussed ongoing negotiations between Moscow and Kyiv to end the conflict in Ukraine in the call, which was a “French initiative”, it said. Macron has played a leading role in trying to defuse the crisis through a diplomatic push that has seen him speak with Putin in person or by phone around a dozen times since the conflict began. During the latest call, which lasted one hour and 10 minutes, Macron expressed his “extreme concern” over the fate of Mariupol. Macron’s office said he urged “a lifting of the siege and humanitarian access” to the city, with “concrete and verifiable measures” to ensure residents’ safety. The French president also “again demanded the immediate respect of a cease-fire” in Ukraine, the Elysee Palace said.