Moscow offers ceasefire for Mariupol

The Russian leadership has offered a ceasefire for the port city of Mariupol. Ukraine, on the other hand, spoke of an “attempt at manipulation”. A fuel depot was destroyed in a rocket attack on the city of Dnipro.

Russia has again offered a ceasefire for the badly damaged southern Ukrainian port of Mariupol. The measure could come into effect at 9:00 a.m. CEST and is intended to create an opportunity for civilians to be taken out via a humanitarian corridor, the Russian Defense Ministry said.

The escape route is said to lead via the city of Berdyansk, which is under Russian control, to Zaporizhia, 250 kilometers away. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) should also be involved. Exactly how this is to be done was unclear.

Ukraine declines

The Ukrainian government described the Russian announcement as an attempt at “renewed manipulation”. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his evening address: “We don’t believe anyone, not a single nice phrase.” Russia had already made several such announcements. However, the evacuation efforts had mostly failed, for which both sides blamed each other.

Zelenskyj also stated that Russia wanted to strengthen its troops in the Donbass and was planning a major offensive there. For this purpose, troops were withdrawn from the Kyiv region, which had been successfully repelled there by Ukrainian forces.

Baerbock: Civilians must be rescued

Federal Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock pointed out that “far more than 100,000 civilians” are still trapped in Mariupol. For weeks they have been experiencing “an almost unimaginable nightmare without electricity, without water, without heating in a city that is constantly being hit by Russian bombs, rockets and grenades, and which is being leveled to the ground”.

Russia seems “determined to conquer or destroy the city, no matter the human cost”. She called on the Russian government to “enable safe corridors for civilians to evacuate voluntarily and deliver humanitarian aid to those who cannot or do not want to stay.”

US military also believe Russian forces have begun withdrawing from the area around the decommissioned Chernobyl nuclear power plant north of Kyiv. “We think they’re leaving, but I can’t tell you they’re all gone,” a US Department of Defense official said.

Tank farm destroyed

Meanwhile, fighting continued in large parts of Ukraine during the night. According to Ukrainian sources, a rocket store in the city of Dnipro was destroyed by a rocket. Debris also damaged two tankers, said the head of the regional council, Mykola Lukaschuk. There weren’t any victims.

Pavlo Kyrylenko from the Donetsk Region Coordination Center accused Russia of using phosphorus shells. The weapons used by Russian soldiers caused “a dozen fires” in the small town of Marinka. According to the Air Force in Kyiv, Russia fires missiles at targets in Ukraine even from the Caspian Sea. The information provided by the warring parties cannot be independently verified.