Civilians flee Sumy city as safe corridors open in Ukraine

Lviv: Buses packed with people fleeing the Russian invasion in Ukraine began a procession along a snowy road out of besieged Sumy Tuesday, as a new effort to evacuate civilians along safe corridors finally got underway.

The route out of the eastern city was one of five promised by the Russians to offer civilians a way to escape the Russian onslaught. Even as video posted by the Ukrainian state communications agency showed people with bags boarding buses, it was not clear how long the effort would last. Previous attempts to lead civilians to safety amid the biggest ground war in Europe since World War II have crumbled with renewed attacks.

“The Ukrainian city of Sumy was given a green corridor, the first stage of evacuation began,” the agency tweeted. Sumy is just 50 kilometers (30 miles) from the Russian border. With the invasion well into its second week, Russian troops have made significant advances in southern Ukraine but stalled in some other regions. Ukrainian soldiers and volunteers fortified the capital, Kyiv, with hundreds of checkpoints and barricades designed to thwart a takeover.

A steady rain of shells and rockets fell on other population centers, including the Kyiv suburb of Bucha, where the mayor reported heavy artillery fire. “We can’t even gather up the bodies because the shelling from heavy weapons doesn’t stop day or night,” Mayor Anatol Fedoruk said. “Dogs are pulling apart the bodies on the city streets. It’s a nightmare.”

In one of the most desperate cities, the encircled southern port of Mariupol, an estimated 200,000 people — nearly half the population of 430,000 — were hoping to flee, and Red Cross officials waited to hear when a corridor would be established. —AP