Ukraine and Russia have agreed on three evacuation corridors for Wednesday, Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine Iryna Vereshchuk said. Verestsuk said a corridor for the evacuation of Mariupol residents and the delivery of humanitarian aid to Berdyansk, a corridor for the delivery of humanitarian aid and evacuation from Melitopol and one for a column of people in private vehicles from Enerhodar to Zaporizhia. “The convoys of buses and trucks with humanitarian aid have already left Zaporizhia,” he said in a video Wednesday. “We urge the occupying forces to abide by their commitments and to allow humanitarian columns through checkpoints.” Vereshchuk said that the Russian delegation in the talks on Tuesday between Russian and Ukrainian groups in Istanbul received proposals from the Ukrainian side to organize evacuation corridors for some of the areas most affected by the conflict, including Kharkiv, Kyiv, Khersk. Chernihiv, Sumy, Zaporizhzhia. Donetsk, Luhansk and Mykolaiv regions. At least 14 people are now believed to have been killed and 33 others injured in a Russian airstrike on the office of the regional military governor of Ukraine’s southwestern Mykolaiv region on Tuesday. A “number of people” remain trapped under the rubble, Mykolaiv Mayor Alexander Sinkevich told CNN. Some background: Vereshchuk’s announcement comes two days after the mayor of the besieged city of Mariupol said evacuation corridors were largely under Russian control, after weeks of bombardment that left the city in pieces, killing an unknown number of civilians and forced hundreds of thousands of residents from their homes. “Not everything is in our power,” Mayor Vadym Boichenko said in a live television interview. “Unfortunately today we are in the hands of the conquerors.” Bojchenko called for the complete evacuation of the remaining population of Mariupol, home to more than 400,000 people, before Russia began its invasion of Ukraine on February 24. Ukrainian officials said Russian forces had prevented evacuation convoys from approaching or leaving the southern port city safely. CNN’s Nathan Hodge and Julia Presniakova contributed to the report in this post.
