Russia has opened "humanitarian corridors" so people can be evacuated from Kyiv and four other Ukrainian cities: Cherhihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv and Mariupol, the Interfax news agency quoted the Russian Defense Ministry as saying on Tuesday.
Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram
The Defense Ministry added that Russian forces in Ukraine had introduced a "silent regime" from 07:00 GMT, Interfax reported.
As the 13th day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine came rolling on Tuesday, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy criticized Russia saying that instead of an agreement on humanitarian corridors, what the country got was "Russian tanks, Russian Grad rockets, Russian mines."
"They even mined the roads that were the agreed routes for taking food and medicine to the people, to the children, of Mariupol," Zelenskyy said in what has become a daily video address close to midnight. On Monday night he spoke from behind the ornate desk in his official office, visual proof that he remains in Kyiv.
During talks on Monday, the Russians proposed evacuation routes leading to Russia and its ally Belarus, rather than to areas of western Ukraine that remain peaceful.
"It's just cynicism," Zelenskyy said. By opening a small corridor to Russia, he said, Moscow is looking only for a propaganda victory.
"I stay in Kyiv. On Bankova Street. I'm not hiding. And I'm not afraid of anyone", says Ukraine President Zelensky in lastest video on telegram pic.twitter.com/yxluFAoWwB
— Sidhant Sibal (@sidhant) March 8, 2022
Meanwhile, a senior US defense official said on Monday that Russian President Vladimir Putin has now deployed into Ukraine nearly 100% of the more than 150,000 forces that he had pre-staged outside the country before the invasion.
"That's our best estimate right now," the official told reporters, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Addressing the nation said in a televised message to mark International Women's Day, Putin said on Tuesday that the Kremlin would not use any conscript soldiers in Ukraine.
"I emphasize that conscript soldiers are not participating in hostilities and will not participate in them. And there will be no additional call-up of reservists," he said.
However, the same US official said Russia was attempting to recruit Syrian fighters for the Ukraine war.
He said a report by The Wall Street Journal the previous day on the recruitment effort was accurate, referring to a story about Moscow seeking out Syrian fighters with urban-warfare experience who could aid Russian invasion efforts of Ukrainian cities, like its capital of Kiev.
According to NPR, "the American defense official described the story as accurate, though the US does not have estimates on the number or quality of the fighters Russia may have signed up."
Russia has not commented on the reports.
"It's not clear how long it might take such a group of Syrian fighters to reach Ukraine, how they would integrate with the Russian military or how effective they might be," said NPR.
It noted, however, that the report on Russia's recruiting effort "is the latest sign that Russia's invasion of Ukraine is not going as planned."
Russian ground maneuvers outside of Kyiv and other cities have stalled in recent days, it noted, unlike more rapid movement into southern Ukrainian cities.
Twelve days after starting its invasion of Ukraine, Russian forces have largely stalled north on Kyiv and still do not control the skies over Ukraine, increasingly relying on missile and artillery strikes.
The official said Russia had fired more than 625 missiles at Ukrainian targets.
The Pentagon ordered over the weekend an additional 500 troops to Europe, which would bring the total number of American forces there to about 100,000, the official said, as the United States seeks to guard against the war's spillover into NATO nations.
The additional troops had largely been expected and are being sent from the United States to support American troops already in the region.
"It is not based on something that we saw over the course of the weekend," the official said.
The deployment included additional refueling aircraft that would be sent to Greece along with an ordnance and maintenance company.
The official added that while the airspace over Ukraine was still contested, Putin still had the "vast majority" of his fighter jets and helicopter that had been amassed near Ukraine available to fly.
"We have seen no indication that he has felt compelled to flow in from elsewhere in Russia additional air force capability," the official added.
On Monday, the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine deepened as Russian forces intensified their shelling and food, water, heat, and medicine grew increasingly scarce, in what the country condemned as a medieval-style siege by Moscow to batter it into submission.
A third round of talks between the two sides ended with a top Ukrainian official saying there had been minor, unspecified progress toward establishing safe corridors that would allow civilians to escape the fighting. Russia's chief negotiator said he expects those corridors to start operating Tuesday.
But that remained to be seen, given the failure of previous attempts to lead civilians to safety amid the biggest ground war in Europe since World War II.
Well into the second week of the invasion, with Russian troops making significant advances in southern Ukraine but stalled in some other regions, a top US official said multiple countries were discussing whether to provide the warplanes that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been pleading for.
Putin's forces continued to pummel cities with rockets, and fierce fighting raged in places. In the face of the bombardments, Zelenskyy said Ukrainian forces were showing unprecedented courage.
"The problem is that for one soldier of Ukraine, we have 10 Russian soldiers, and for one Ukrainian tank, we have 50 Russian tanks," Zelenskyy told ABC News in an interview that aired Monday night. He noted that the gap in forces was diminishing and that even if Russian forces "come into all our cities," they will be met with an insurgency.
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.
The city is short on water, food and power, and cellphone networks are down. Stores have been looted as residents search for essential goods.
Police moved through the city, advising people to remain in shelters until they heard official messages broadcast over loudspeakers to evacuate.
Hospitals in Mariupol are facing severe shortages of antibiotics and painkillers, and doctors performed some emergency procedures without them.
The lack of phone service left anxious citizens approaching strangers to ask if they knew relatives living in other parts of the city and whether they were safe.
In the capital, Kyiv, soldiers and volunteers have built hundreds of checkpoints to protect the city of nearly 4 million, often using sandbags, stacked tires and spiked cables. Some barricades looked significant, with heavy concrete slabs and sandbags piled more than two stories high, while others appeared more haphazard, with hundreds of books used to weigh down stacks of tires.
"Every house, every street, every checkpoint, we will fight to the death if necessary," Mayor Vitali Klitschko said.
In Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, with 1.4 million people, heavy shelling slammed into apartment buildings.
"I think it struck the fourth floor under us," Dmitry Sedorenko said from his Kharkiv hospital bed. "Immediately, everything started burning and falling apart." When the floor collapsed beneath him, he crawled out through the third story, past the bodies of some of his neighbors.
Klitschko reported that fierce battles continued in the Kyiv region, notably around Bucha, Hostomel, Vorzel and Irpin.
In the Irpin area, which has been cut off from electricity, water and heat for three days, witnesses saw at least three tanks and said Russian soldiers were seizing houses and cars.
A few miles away, in the small town of Horenka, where shelling reduced one area to ashes and shards of glass, rescuers and residents picked through the ruins as chickens pecked around them.
"What are they doing?" rescue worker Vasyl Oksak asked of the Russian attackers. "There were two little kids and two elderly people living here. Come in and see what they have done."
In the south, Russian forces also continued their offensive in Mykolaiv, opening fire on the Black Sea shipbuilding center of a half-million people, according to Ukraine's military. Rescuers said they were putting out fires caused by rocket attacks in residential areas.
At The Hague, Netherlands, Ukraine pleaded with the International Court of Justice to order a halt to Russia's invasion, saying Moscow is committing widespread war crimes.
Russia "is resorting to tactics reminiscent of medieval siege warfare, encircling cities, cutting off escape routes and pounding the civilian population with heavy ordnance," Jonathan Gimblett, a member of Ukraine's legal team, said.
Russia snubbed the court proceedings, leaving its seats in the Great Hall of Justice empty.
Efforts to set up safe passage for civilians over the weekend fell apart amid continued Russian shelling. Before Monday's talks began, Russia announced a new plan, saying civilians would be allowed to leave Kyiv, Mariupol, Kharkiv and Sumy.
But many of the evacuation routes headed toward Russia or its ally Belarus, which has served as a launch pad for the invasion. Ukraine instead proposed eight routes allowing civilians to travel to western regions of the country where there is no shelling.
Later, Russia's UN Ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, told the UN Security Council that Russia would carry out a cease-fire Tuesday morning and appeared to suggest that humanitarian corridors leading away from Kyiv, Mariupol, Sumy and Chernigov could give people choice in where they want to go.
The UN humanitarian chief, Undersecretary-General Martin Griffiths, addressed the Security Council and urged safe passage for people to go "in the direction they choose."
Zelenskyy's office would not comment on the Russian proposal, saying only that Moscow's plans can be believed only if a safe evacuation begins. The office said Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk planned to make a statement on the issue Tuesday morning.
The battle for Mariupol is crucial because its capture could allow Moscow to establish a land corridor to Crimea, which Russia seized from Ukraine in 2014.
The fighting has sent energy prices surging worldwide and stocks plummeting and threatens the food supply and livelihoods of people around the globe who rely on crops farmed in the fertile Black Sea region.
The UN human rights office reported 406 confirmed civilian deaths but said the real number is much higher. The invasion has also sent 1.7 million people fleeing Ukraine.
On Monday, Moscow again announced a series of demands to stop the invasion, including that Ukraine recognizes Crimea as part of Russia and recognize the eastern regions controlled by Moscow-supported separatist fighters as an independent. It also insisted that Ukraine change its constitution to guarantee it won't join international bodies like NATO and the EU. Ukraine has already rejected those demands.
Helens has called for more punitive measures against Russia, including a global boycott of its oil exports, which are key to its economy.
"If [Russia] doesn't want to abide by civilized rules, then they shouldn't receive goods and services from civilization," he said in a video address.
He has also asked for more warplanes. Deputy US Secretary of State Wendy Sherman said officials are "trying to see whether this is possible and doable."
While the West has been rushing weapons to Ukraine such as anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles, some officials fear that sending warplanes could be seen by Moscow as direct involvement in the war.
One possible scenario under discussion: Former Soviet bloc nations that are now NATO members could send Ukraine their own Soviet-era MiGs, which Ukrainian pilots are trained to fly, and the US would then replace those countries' aircraft with American-made F-16s.
Russia's invasion has nearby countries terrified the war could spread to them.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken began a lightning visit to the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, former Soviet republics that are NATO members. Blinken hoped to reassure them of the alliance's protection.
NATO has shown no interest in sending troops into the country and has rejected Zelenskyy's pleas to establish a no-fly zone for fear of triggering a wider war.
Blinken also thanked Israel on Monday for its efforts to end Russia's war with Ukraine as he and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid met to discuss the conflict and ongoing nuclear talks with Iran in Vienna.
Blinken said that any initiative to try to halt the conflict would be welcome as long as the move is consistent with US, NATO and European principles that Ukraine's independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity are respected.
He made the comments as he and Lapid sat down for hastily arranged talks in the Latvian capital of Riga just two days after Prime Minister Naftali Bennett met with Putin in Moscow.
"We very much appreciate the efforts that any of our close partners and friends and allies can make to see if there's any opening to end the war consistently, of course, with the principles that we've all established," Blinken told Lapid.
"I look forward to hearing your ideas, hearing about some of the engagements that Israel has had, but we appreciate all efforts by friends and allies to look for a diplomatic resolution," he said.
Lapid, who flew to Latvia especially to brief Blinken on Bennett's meeting with Putin and express Israel's grave concern at the prospect of a new nuclear deal with Iran, said the meeting was taking place "at the moment the world order is changing."
"The war that is going on in Ukraine and the nuclear talks in Vienna are events that are changing the world as we know it," he said, adding that Jerusalem was "completely committed" to doing everything in its power to bring an end to the war in Ukraine.
On Iran, Lapid noted Israel's concerns about the nuclear negotiations potentially at the point of a breakthrough, saying Israel has well-known differences with the U.S. on a deal even if they share the end goal of preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.
"It's no secret we have our differences on this, but it's a conversation between allies that have a common goal, which is preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear threshold country and to stop Iran's ability to spread terror and instability all around the world," Lapid said.
Blinken responded that both Israel and the United States are "united and committed to the proposition that Iran must never obtain a nuclear weapon."
Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!
