March 5 (UPI) — Officials of two Ukrainian cities said Saturday that evacuations were postponed after Russia broke a temporary cease-fire.
Russia and Ukraine had agreed to the temporary cease-fire early Saturday in the port city of Mariupol and the nearby city of Volnovakha to allow evacuation of civilians and delivery of humanitarian aid, but officials of both cities said shelling has continued.
The Mariupol city council said in a statement that residents should return to city shelters and wait there for further evacuation information as negotiations took place to ensure a safe route.
“We ask all Mariupol residents to disperse and follow to the places of shelter,” the city council’s statement posted on Telegram said.
In a video posted to Telegram, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereschuk accused Russian forces of “shelling Volnovakha with heavy weapons.”
“I hereby state that Russia has violated this agreement, failed to fulfill its duty,” Vereschuk added.
Later Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is expected to brief U.S. senators as Congress considers a $10 billion request for emergency funding for humanitarian and security needs.
On Friday night, Zelensky called NATO “weak” after the alliance rejected a no-fly zone over Ukraine.
The United States and Western allies have said they will not create such a zone because it would provoke further war in Europe.
Earlier Friday, Russian forces also took control of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station in Ukraine’s southeast after a shelling attack — an act of aggression that U.S. officials say amounts to a war crime.
Russian forces also seized the key port city of Kherson earlier this week where about 2,000 people marched on Saturday against the Russian occupation.
The demonstrators waved flags, sang the Ukrainian anthem and shouted “Russians go home,” the BBC reported.
The resistance at this point is “unarmed,” Kherson Mayor Ihor Kolykhaiev told CNN, since “the army has been defeated.”
“We don’t have more weapons to resist, to put up an armed resistance,” Kolykhaiev added.
Britain’s Ministry of Defense said in an update early Saturday that the rate of air and artillery strikes has fallen over the past 24 hours compared to previous days, but Russian forces were still “probably advancing on the southern port city of Mykolaiv,” and possibly a crucial port, Odessa.
An advance on Ukraine’s capital city of Kyiv slowed last week amid street fighting resistance, but the Ministry of Defense said in another update Saturday it was “highly likely” that Ukraine’s second largest city, Kharkiv, along with Sumy and Chernihiv and Mariupol, were encircled by Russian forces.
Since the Russian invasion began, more than 1 million Ukrainians have fled the country, including more than 756,000 settling in Poland, more than 157,000 in Hungary, and more than 133,000 settling in other European countries, according to United Nations data.
