Buses have transported civilians out of one besieged Ukrainian city even as the government accused Russia of shelling a humanitarian corridor set up to allow thousands of trapped civilians at the port city of Mariupol to flee the fighting that has devastated some residential areas.
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UN officials reported on March 8 that 2 million people had fled Ukraine since the unprovoked Russian attack started on February 24, sparking Europe’s worst refugee crisis since World War II.
Two convoys of evacuees left the northeastern Ukrainian city of Sumy through a humanitarian corridor created under a temporary cease-fire agreement with Russia, Ukrainian officials said.
That came hours after Russian air strikes overnight on Sumy killed 21 people, including two children, according to the Ukrainian Prosecutor-General’s Office. At least four Ukrainian soldiers were also killed, the military said.
Since the invasion began, more than 400 civilian deaths have been recorded by the UN human rights office, which said the true number is likely much higher as it continues to process the situation.
Mariupol has been without water, heat, sanitary systems, or phones for several days, one of the most desperate scenes of the nearly two-week-old war. An estimated 200,000 people — nearly half the population of 430,000 — hope to flee the city.
“The enemy has launched an attack heading exactly at the humanitarian corridor,” the ministry said on Facebook, adding that the Russian Army “did not let children, women, and elderly people leave the city.”
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said the convoys from Sumy were headed southwest to the Ukrainian city of Poltava, and included students from India and China. She said the agreed truce would last from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., local time.
Elsewhere, efforts continued to evacuate the Kyiv suburb of Irpin, which, according to residents, came under some of the most intensive Russian shelling overnight.
About 3,000 people have been brought to safety from the embattled Ukrainian town of Irpin so far, according to the authorities.
WATCH: Thousands of people are trying to flee the Ukrainian city of Irpin for the capital, Kyiv, almost 25 kilometers away. Ukrainian forces have blown up bridges near the city to stop advancing Russian tanks. Current Time filmed local residents trying to escape Russian shelling and flee in any way possible.
As the war raged for a 13th day, Western countries and analysts said Russia’s initial plan for a rapid strike to topple the government had failed, pushing Moscow to change tactics and instead slowly throttle cities.
Corridors to let civilians escape and allow aid to reach besieged areas has been the main subject of talks between Russian and Ukrainian delegations, but there has been little success in opening them.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy called for the expansion of humanitarian corridors, and more support from the Red Cross to help keep them open and to move people out of harm’s way.
In a video address from an undisclosed location on March 8, he said a child died of dehydration in Mariupol, in a sign of how desperate the city’s population has become.
In Photos: Fortress Kyiv
Historic scenes of the Ukrainian capital fortified with sandbags, anti-tank obstacles, and armed volunteers as a Russian advance appears to stall to the north of Kyiv.
The president again pleaded for air support from Western countries. A top U.S. official said multiple countries were discussing whether to provide warplanes to Ukraine, according to AP.
Later on March 8, he released a selfie video of himself standing near the presidential offices in Kyiv, with piles of sandbags, a snow-dusted fir tree, and a few cars in the background. It was the second video in 24 hours showing him near the country’s seat of power.
In a soft voice, he said: “Snow fell. It’s that kind of springtime. You see, it’s that kind of wartime, that kind of springtime. Harsh. But we will win.”
WATCH: RFE/RL has acquired drone footage said to be of Russian truck-mounted Grad rockets being launched in Ukraine’s Kyiv region on March 5. The footage is understood to have been shot by volunteers assisting the Ukrainian military. The group would not give a more specific location for security reasons.
The announcements came after a third round of talks between Ukrainian and Russian delegations were held on March 7 in neighboring Belarus.
Ukraine’s military, meanwhile, said on March 8 that it had managed to slow down the Russian attack, saying that although “the enemy is continuing an offensive operation, the pace of advance of its troops has slowed significantly.”
The General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said early on March 8 that Ukrainian forces were still defending their positions in the southern, eastern, and northern sectors on the country and that Kyiv and the northern city of Chernihiv were still in Ukrainian hands.
The statements could not be independently verified.
In addition, the Ukrainian Red Cross has distributed hygiene and food kits, warm clothing, and medicine to thousands of people.
The United Nations refugee chief said on March 8 the number of people fleeing Russia’s advance into Ukraine had reached 2 million.
Filippo Grandi, the UN’s high commissioner for refugees, made his remarks at a press conference in Oslo after visiting Moldova, Poland, and Romania, all of which have received refugees pouring across the border from Ukraine since Russia invaded the country on February 24.
Grandi said that, by comparison, the Balkan wars in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo saw “maybe 2 to 3 million people, but over a period of eight years.”
While other parts of the “world have seen this,” Grandi added, “in Europe it’s the first time since the Second World War.”
More than 1.2 million of those refugees have crossed into neighboring Poland, including 141,500 on March 7, the Polish border guard said on March 8.
At the United Nations, Griffiths told a Security Council meeting on March 7 that his office has sent a team to Moscow to coordinate with the Russian military to try to scale-up the delivery of humanitarian aid.
Griffiths said the UN and its partners have already provided food to hundreds of thousands of people, and the World Food Program “is setting up supply chain operations to deliver immediate food and cash assistance to 3-5 million people inside Ukraine.”
On March 7, Russian forces opened fire on the city of Mykolayiv, 480 kilometers south of Kyiv. Rescuers said they were putting out fires in residential areas caused by rocket attacks.
The commander of Ukraine’s armed forces, General Valeriy Zaluzhniy, said Ukrainian forces had shot down a Russian jet over Kyiv and that a second Russian plane was shot down in an air battle near the city.
