Kyiv has rejected Moscow’s offer to set up humanitarian corridors out of key Ukrainian cities that would lead to Russia and Belarus, according to officials.
Some of the evacuation routes would funnel civilians toward Russia and its ally Belarus, prompting Ukrainian authorities to reject the plans as “unacceptable.”
“This is unacceptable option of creating humanitarian corridors [only in Russia and Belarus]. Our people from Ivankiv, Dymer, Vyshhorod, Kyiv won’t go to Belarus to fly later to Russia,” Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister, Iryna Vereshchuk, said in a video statement.
A spokesperson for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called the move “completely immoral,” saying Russia was trying to exploit the situation for propaganda by using “people’s suffering to create a television picture.”
“They are citizens of Ukraine, they should have the right to evacuate to the territory of Ukraine,” the spokesperson told Reuters.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said Monday’s ceasefire and the opening of the corridors came at the personal request of French President Emmanuel Macron, who spoke by phone on Sunday with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and in light of the “catastrophic humanitarian situation and its dramatic deterioration” in the four cities in question.
The Élysée Palace denied that Macron had made such a request, according to The Guardian. Macron himself said as much in an interview with French television broadcaster LCI.
“All this is not serious, it is moral and political cynicism, which I find intolerable,” Macron told LCI television in an interview, adding that pledges to protect civilians so that they could merely flee toward Russia were “hypocritical.”
“I do not know many Ukrainians who want to go to Russia,” Macron added, saying that full ceasefires were needed to protect civilians rather than corridors.
The move to open the corridors comes after two failed attempts to evacuate civilians from Mariupol, with Russia and Ukraine trading blame for ceasefire violations that made the evacuation impossible.
It also comes as a third round of Russia–Ukraine peace talks is scheduled to be held later on Monday on the border between Belarus and Poland.
Peskov on Monday told Reuters that Russia is demanding that Ukraine halt military action, change its constitution to enshrine neutrality, acknowledge Crimea as Russian territory, and recognize the separatist republics of Donetsk and Lugansk as independent territories. He added that Russia had told Ukraine it was ready to stop its military action “in a moment” if Kyiv met these conditions.
In separate phone calls on Sunday with Macron and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Putin said Russia would only halt its military operation if Ukrainian forces stopped fighting and Moscow’s “well-known” demands were met, according to the Kremlin’s readout of the calls.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has led to a massive humanitarian crisis, with the United Nations estimating that 1.5 million people have fled Ukraine to escape the war.
Russian forces continued their offensive on Monday, opening fire on the city of Mykolaiv, while shelling continued in the suburbs of Kyiv, according to Ukraine’s general staff.
“Russia continues to carry out rocket, bomb, and artillery strikes on the cities and settlements of Ukraine, focusing on the encirclement of Kyiv, Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Sumy, and Mykolayiv,” the general staff said.
Monday marks the 12th day of the war, which Moscow calls a “special military operation” to “demilitarize and denazify” Ukraine.
