MUKACHEVO, Ukraine — The desperate effort to secure safe passage for civilians trapped in Ukrainian cities under attack by Russian forces remained deeply precarious on Tuesday: A single evacuation route opened, allowing thousands to escape safely, while Ukraine accused Russia of shelling another proposed corridor.
As the situation in several cities grows more dire — with hundreds of thousands lacking power, heat and water and facing regular bombardment — Ukraine is seeking to avert a further humanitarian disaster. More than 2 million people, half of them children, have fled to neighboring countries since Feb. 24 when the conflict began.
U.S. intelligence officials warned Tuesday that Russian President Vladimir Putin may escalate his campaign to subjugate Ukraine despite encountering military setbacks and an increasingly punishing slate of sanctions. President Biden announced that the United States would ban the import of Russian oil and natural gas in what he called “another powerful blow to Putin’s war machine.” Biden acknowledged that Americans will feel the impact in the form of higher gas prices, which are already at a record high.
Speaking via video to British lawmakers, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky vowed to counter the Russian invasion, using words that echoed a famed speech by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill during World War II. “We will continue fighting for our land, whatever the cost,” Zelensky said. “We will fight in the forests, on the shores, in the streets.”
At least 474 civilians — including dozens of children — have been confirmed killed in Ukraine since the start of the Russian invasion, the United Nations said, adding that the true figure is likely to be far higher. Most of the deaths were caused by explosive weaponry such as heavy artillery and missiles, it said.
Russia had announced earlier Tuesday that it was opening corridors to evacuate civilians from several cities, including Mariupol and Kyiv. But the Kremlin said refugees from the Ukrainian capital would be flown to Russia after transiting through Belarus, a key Russian ally.
Such conditions are unacceptable to Ukraine, which has rejected the idea of evacuation corridors leading to Russia or Belarus. The Ukrainian government said Tuesday that the only agreed routes were for other regions within Ukraine.
One humanitarian corridor, from the city of Sumy in northeastern Ukraine, managed to open on Tuesday morning, said Dmytro Zhivitsky, the regional governor, in an update on the messaging app Telegram, despite a shooting incident near a checkpoint. He said a column of buses headed west and then south to Poltava, a city about 100 miles away, with priority given to children, disabled residents, pregnant women and the elderly.
Humanitarian corridors proposed by Russia
Corridors to other regions of Ukraine
Corridors to Russia or Belarus
Russian-held areas
BELARUS
RUSSIA
Gomel
Sumy
Belgorod
Kyiv
Kharkiv
Poltava
UKRAINE
Separatist-
controlled
area
Zaporizhzhia
Mariupol
Kherson
Rostov-
on-Don
Odessa
Crimea
Annexed by Russia
in 2014
100 MILES
Black Sea
Control areas as of March 7.
Routes are approximate.
Sources: Institute for the Study of War; Post reporting, Russian Ministry of Defense
Humanitarian corridors proposed by Russia
Corridors to Russia or Belarus
Corridors to other regions of Ukraine
Russian-held areas
RUSSIA
BELARUS
Gomel
Sumy
Belgorod
Kyiv
Kharkiv
Poltava
UKRAINE
Separatist-
controlled
area
Zaporizhzhia
Mariupol
Rostov-
on-Don
ROMANIA
Kherson
Odessa
100 MILES
Crimea
Annexed by Russia
in 2014
Black
Sea
Control areas as of March 7. Routes are approximate.
Sources: Institute for the Study of War; Post reporting, Russian Ministry of Defense
Zhivitsky said that as of Tuesday afternoon, people were able to leave the city in their own cars. He emphasized they should depart by early evening, ahead of the closing of the “green corridor” at 9 p.m. local time. While the governor said the corridor stemmed from an agreement between Ukraine and Russia, he warned that there was still a “very high risk of provocation,” and he urged people to evaluate the risks of leaving for themselves.
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said 5,000 people, including 1,700 foreign students, were evacuated from Sumy, the Associated Press reported. Among them were nearly 700 Indian students who had been trapped in the city without power or water and were taking refuge in makeshift underground shelters. From Poltava, they will board trains for western Ukraine, the Indian government said.
Meanwhile, a planned evacuation from Mariupol could not start Tuesday morning because of the violence, according to Vereshchuk. The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said a fleet of vehicles had been ready to deliver aid to the port city and carry civilians northwest toward another region of the country.
Zelensky accused Russia on Tuesday of using siege tactics in Mariupol, saying Russian forces had shut off communication, blocked the delivery of food and cut electricity in the city. Mariupol is being “deliberately exhausted [and] deliberately tortured,” Zelensky said.
The city “doesn’t have time to wait,” he said, adding that a child had died of dehydration there “perhaps for the first time since the Nazi occupation.” The Washington Post could not independently verify the claim.
Mikhail Mizintsev, the head of the Russian National Defense Control Center, blamed Ukraine for the failure of evacuations Tuesday. He accused Ukrainian authorities of confirming only the route out of Sumy while rejecting others proposed by Russia.
Russia is still pushing to encircle Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, a U.S. intelligence official testified at a congressional hearing Tuesday. If Russian forces cut off supplies to the capital, the situation in the city “will become somewhat desperate” in 10 days to two weeks, said Lt. Gen Scott Berrier, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.
For days, a miles-long convoy of Russian vehicles has been stalled beginning at the Hostomel airport, about 15 miles northwest of Kyiv. But Russian forces are also positioned about 37 miles to Kyiv’s east, after advancing southwest from the city of Sumy, a senior U.S. defense official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the Pentagon.
Russia has launched nearly 670 missiles into Ukraine since the invasion began, the official said, a figure that has increased by several dozen a day.
In a move that blindsided U.S. officials, the government of Poland announced Tuesday that it was ready to hand over an unspecified number of MiG-29 fighter jets to the United States so that the warplanes could be transferred to Ukraine for use against invading Russian forces.
U.S. officials said Poland did not warn them before the announcement; the Pentagon subsequently said Poland’s offer appeared to be untenable.
At Tuesday’s hearing of the House Intelligence Committee, U.S. intelligence officials said Putin had failed to anticipate the strength and unity of the Western response to his invasion of Ukraine, and that his military’s performance has been less effective than expected.
Russia’s military faced determined resistance from its much smaller Ukrainian counterpart, the officials said. Berrier estimated that as many as 4,000 Russian troops may have died in the invasion, although he said he had low confidence in the estimate.
Avril Haines, the nation’s top intelligence official, testified that Putin “may escalate, essentially doubling down” to prevent Ukraine from further aligning itself with the United States and NATO. Putin “perceives this as a war he cannot afford to lose,” Haines said.
Any escalation would be devastating for Ukraine’s more than 40 million people, who are facing both violence and critical shortages of food, heat, fuel and water. The United Nations on Tuesday said 2 million people have fled the country, despite the lack of protected evacuation corridors, making it the fastest growing refugee crisis in Europe since World War II. Half of those fleeing are children, UNICEF said Monday.
Ukraine’s State Customs Service said citizens seeking safe haven in other European countries should head for Hungary, Romania, Slovakia and Moldova, where checkpoints are empty or free of large crowds. Land crossings into Poland, which has taken in more than 1 million people, are among the most congested, the agency said.
For Russia, the economic costs of the invasion continue to mount. Britain announced Tuesday that it would phase out imports of Russian oil by the end of the year, while the European Commission presented a plan to cut Russian gas imports by two-thirds in 2022, marking a dramatic shift for countries that remain heavily reliant on relatively cheap and abundant Russian energy.
In less than two weeks, Russia has become the most-sanctioned nation in the world, surpassing countries such as Iran, North Korea and Syria, according to data from Castellum.ai, a global database that tracks sanctions. Its data shows that Moscow now faces 5,532 sanctions, well ahead of Iran, which is second on the list with 3,616.
Starbucks and McDonald’s became the latest multinationals to pause operations in Russia in the face of pressure from customers and large investors.
McDonald’s said it would temporarily close 850 restaurants in the country but continue paying its 62,000 employees there. Chief executive Chris Kempczinski wrote in a letter to staff that it was “impossible to predict” when the outlets would reopen, saying the company “cannot ignore the needless human suffering unfolding in Ukraine.”
Francis reported from London and Nakashima from Washington. Karla Adam, Adela Suliman and Amar Nadhir in London; Dan Lamothe, John Hudson, Timothy Bella, Jacob Bogage, John Wagner and Miriam Berger in Washington; Emily Rauhala in Brussels; Amy Cheng in Seoul; Niha Masih in New Delhi; and other Washington Post staff contributed to this report.