Russia-Ukraine War: Civilians Flee Sumy as Safe Corridor Opens

By Derrick Bangura

Buses carrying people fleeing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began a procession along a snowy road out of one city on Tuesday, as a new effort to evacuate civilians along safe corridors finally got underway. The Russian onslaught has forced 2 million people to flee Ukraine, according to UN officials, but has trapped others inside besieged cities that are running low on food, water, and medicine in the midst of Europe’s largest ground war since World War II. Attempts to lead civilians to safety in the past have failed due to renewed attacks. The route people took out of the eastern city of Sumy on Tuesday was one of five promised by the Russians as a way for civilians to flee the fighting.
Video posted by the Ukrainian state communications agency showed people with bags boarding buses, but it was not clear how long the effort would last.“The Ukrainian city of Sumy was given a green corridor, the first stage of evacuation began,” the agency tweeted. Sumy is just 50 kilometres 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 centres, 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.