Evacuation on hold as Ukraine-Russia ceasefire collapses

A temporary ceasefire agreement between Russia and Ukraine to evacuate civilians from the besieged cities of Mariupol and Volnovakha collapsed on Saturday, as Kyiv accused Moscow of ceasefire violation and resuming attacks on residential areas.

Some 200,000 civilians were expected to start leaving Mariupol and 15,000 from Volnovakha in eastern Ukraine at 9 am local time, in a deal overseen by the International Committee of the Red Cross, according to international media reports.

But Russia resumed shelling Volnovakha with heavy weapons just hours after the ceasefire went into force, while also continuing military operations on the route leading out of Mariupol, said Ukraine's Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk.

"We ask the Russian side to stop the shelling, return to the ceasefire and allow us to create humanitarian columns so that children, women and the elderly can leave," reported The Wall Street Journal quoting the deputy prime minister.

According to the Tass news agency, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Saturday asserted once again that Moscow, despite ample evidence to the contrary, was not targeting Ukraine's civilian population and said that Kyiv was deliberately obstructing the evacuation to keep civilians hostage.

He added that Kyiv has not yet indicated when Ukrainian representatives would meet the Russian delegation for the third round of ceasefire talks.

Ukraine faces an unfolding humanitarian disaster as food, water and medicine run short. More than 1.2 million people have fled in search of safety.

The New York Times says US Secretary of State Antony J Blinken landed in Rzeszow, Poland Saturday to meet with top Polish officials about the Russian invasion that has pushed the people to flee Ukraine.

In parts of the country already captured by Russian forces there were signs of public anger at the occupation. Video footage posted on social media showed a huge demonstration in the city of Kherson, in southern Ukraine, which was overrun by Russian troops earlier this week.

Governments around the world have condemned Russian president Vladimir Putin's tactics in Ukraine, especially the indiscriminate shelling of cities that has laid waste to residential areas and caused heavy casualties among the civilian population. The US estimates that Russia has unleashed more than 500 missiles since the start of the invasion.

The UK's defence ministry said Russian forces were likely to advance on two more port cities in Ukraine, following their assault on Mariupol.

Russia is "probably advancing" towards the southern port city of Mykolaiv, the ministry said on Saturday, but there was a "realistic possibility" that some Russian forces would bypass the city and push towards Odesa, Ukraine's main port on the Black Sea.

Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine's president, on Saturday reiterated his calls for the North Atlantic Alliance (Nato) to impose a no-fly zone over his country — which the alliance has so far rejected, reported Reuters.

"We have seen the opinion of ordinary people in America who support ordinary people in Ukraine," he said. "What else is needed to make a decision?"

Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said Nato members were "perfectly aware of the impossibility of their direct involvement in the Ukraine events", according to Interfax, the Russian news agency.

Zelensky said Ukrainian forces continued to control key cities including Kharkiv in the east, Mykolaiv in the south and Chernihiv in the north.

"We are inflicting losses on the occupiers that they did not imagine in their worst dreams," he said.

Military analysts said Russia's main objective remained the encirclement of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, an advance that western officials say has made little discernible progress for several days because of tactical and logistical failures, reported CNN.

A US official said Russian soldiers also remained 10km from the centres of both Chernihiv and Kharkiv, which are under bombardment from the air.

In Russia, thousands of people have travelled to neighbouring states as an intensifying crackdown on the country's independent media forced a number of news outlets to suspend their work.

Moscow announced on Friday that it was banning Facebook and restricting access to Twitter. The authorities have also shut down liberal media outlets such as Echo of Moscow and TV Rain, while some websites have been blocked, including British broadcaster the BBC.

According to The Guardian, Russian and western journalists left the country after Moscow imposed a new law that threatened jail terms of up to 15 years for those spreading "fake news".

Russians began to leave the nation this week after rumours circulated in Moscow that the authorities might be about to declare martial law.