An agreement has been reached for the establishment of 10 humanitarian corridors to evacuate civilians from front-line hotspots in Ukrainian towns and cities, officials said.
Key points:
- Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said a deal has been reached with Russia
- Russia is yet to comment or verify the agreement
- Many efforts to evacuate civilians through humanitarian corridors have previously failed
Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said Ukraine had made the deal with Russia for the corridors to open immediately.
Russia has yet to comment or publicly verify the agreement.
Speaking on national television, Ms Vereshchuk said civilians trying to flee the city of Mariupol would have to leave in private cars as Russian forces were not letting buses through their checkpoints.
Previous attempts to arrange safe passage out of the southern port city, which is surrounded by Russian forces, have failed.
Ms Vereshchuk said that more than 100,000 people still needed to be evacuated from Mariupol.
Also on Saturday, Mariupol’s Mayor said he had spoken to France’s ambassador to Ukraine about options for evacuating civilians after French President Emmanuel Macron said he would propose to Russia a plan to help people leave.
Speaking on national television, Vadym Boichenko said the situation in the encircled city remained critical, with street fighting taking place in its centre.
Mariupol, which is normally home to about 400,000 people, has been under heavy bombardment for weeks.
Civilians trapped there have been sheltering in basements with little food, power or running water.
Meanwhile, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko announced that the curfew in the Ukrainian capital would be extended from 8pm (local time) on Saturday until 8am on Monday.
Mr Klitschko said the decision was made by the Ukrainian military, without giving further details.
Russians seize Slavutych
The governor of the Kyiv region said Russian forces had seized Slavutych, a town that sits just outside the exclusion zone that was established around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant after the 1986 disaster.
Oleksandr Pavlyuk said the Russians had also kidnapped the city’s mayor, but media reported later in the day that he was released swiftly.
Neither claim could be verified independently.
Mr Pavlyuk said residents took to the streets with Ukrainian flags to protest the Russian invasion.
Reuters could not independently verify the reports.
ABC/wires