Russian rocket attacks destroyed a Ukrainian airbase and hit an ammunition depot near Vasylkiv in the Kyiv region, Interfax Ukraine has quoted its mayor as saying.
The exhausted-looking governor of Chernihiv, around 150 km (100 miles) northeast of Kyiv, gave a video update in front of the ruins of the city’s Ukraine Hotel.
“There is no such hotel any more,” Viacheslav Chaus said, wiping tears from his eyes. “But Ukraine itself still exists, and it will prevail.”
Britain’s defence ministry has said Russian ground forces were massed 25 km (15 miles) from the centre of Kyiv, while Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Sumy and the key Black Sea port of Mariupol remained encircled under heavy Russian shelling.
The general staff of the Ukraine armed forces said Russia had slowed its offensive and in many places its forces had been stopped. The military’s Facebook post did not give details.
Ukrainian officials had planned to use humanitarian corridors from Mariupol in the south as well as towns and villages in the regions of Kyiv, Sumy and some other areas on Saturday.
Around 13,000 people were evacuated from Ukrainian cities on Saturday, said Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk.
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According to Reuters, the Donetsk region’s governor said constant shelling was complicating bringing aid into Mariupol.
Fires were burning in the western section of the city and dozens of apartment buildings heavily damaged, according to images taken on Saturday by private U.S. satellite firm Maxar.
At least 1,582 civilians in Mariupol have been killed as a result of Russian shelling and a 12-day blockade, the city council said on Friday. Reuters could not verify casualty figures.
“There are reports of looting and violent confrontations among civilians over what little basic supplies remain in the city,” the U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said.
People were boiling ground water for drinking, using wood to cook food and burying their dead near where they lay, a staff member for Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders) in Mariupol said.
