Ukrainians evacuate along humanitarian corridors

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has entered its fourth week without capturing Kyiv or toppling Ukraine’s government, but the bombardment of Ukrainian cities continues — a move western defense experts warn could be a sign of a cruel and intentional strategy.

The situation grew increasingly dire in the port city of Mariupol, where Russian forces pushed deeper Saturday in an area already experiencing what onlookers describe as a humanitarian crisis.

“Children, elderly people are dying. The city is destroyed and it is wiped off the face of the earth,” Mariupol police officer Michail Vershnin said in a video filmed Friday that was authenticated by The Associated Press..

Fighting shut down the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, Vadym Denysenko, adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister, said Saturday, while other officials said forces that could help Ukraine defend Mariupol were facing massive resistance.

“There is currently no military solution to Mariupol,” Oleksiy Arestovych, adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said late Friday. “That is not only my opinion, that is the opinion of the military.”

Britain’s defense intelligence chief described it as an emerging ”strategy of attrition.”

Russian forces are besieging Ukrainian cities, relying increasingly on bombarding them from a distance with artillery, missiles and air strikes, according to the Pentagon.

“This is likely to involve the indiscriminate use of firepower resulting in increased civilian casualties, destruction of Ukrainian infrastructure, and intensify the humanitarian crisis,” British Defense attache Mick Smeath said in a statement Saturday.

Meanwhile in Russia, President Vladimir Putin is reinforcing his control of domestic media, attempting to obscure high casualties amid fierce resistance encountered in his invasion of Ukraine, according to a British Defense Ministry intelligence estimate.

The assessment was echoed by the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based foreign policy think tank, in a report this week. The group warned that since Russia’s “lightning offensive designed to take the capital” had failed, the military appeared to be settling in for an extended campaign “designed to suffocate Ukraine.”

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The strategy would likely involve attacking civilian areas, destroying cities and blocking off supplies, possibly leading to famine, according to the analysis. The organization later drew parallels to an artificial famine engineered by the Kremlin in the 1930s that killed millions of Ukrainians — a Soviet attempt to “subjugate the Ukrainian nation.”

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Latest developments:

►The Mariupol city council claimed Russian soldiers have forced several thousand city residents to be relocated to Russia. “The occupiers illegally took people out of the Levoberezhny district and a shelter in the building of a sports club, where more than a thousand people (mostly women and children) were hiding from constant bombing,” the council said in a statement, according to the Associated Press.

►Saturday, Ukraine and Russia agreed to open 10 humanitarian corridors to assist in the evacuation efforts, according to Ukraine’s deputy prime minster.

►The U.N. migration agency says the fighting has displaced nearly 6.5 million people inside Ukraine, on top of the 3.2 million refugees who have already fled the country. Ukraine says thousands have been killed.

►The Ukraine military claims to have killed another Russian general – the fifth since the invasion began.

Ukrainians evacuated along 8 of 10 agreed upon humanitarian corridors

Evacuations from besieged cities proceeded Saturday along eight of 10 humanitarian corridors, Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said. She said a total of 6,623 people were evacuated, including 4,128 from Mariupol who were taken northwest to Zaporizhzhia.

Russian forces pushed deeper into the besieged and battered port city of Mariupol, where heavy fighting on Saturday shut down a major steel plant and local authorities pleaded for more Western help.

The fall of Mariupol, the scene of some of the war’s worst suffering, would mark a major battlefield advance for the Russians, who are largely bogged down outside major cities more than three weeks into the biggest land invasion in Europe since World War II.

-The Associated Press

Pope Francis visits Ukrainian children at Vatican hospital

Pope Francis has paid a visit to some of the Ukrainian children who escaped the Russian invasion and are currently being treated at the Vatican’s pediatric hospital in Rome.

The Vatican says the Bambino Gesu hospital is currently tending to 19 Ukrainian refugees, and that overall some 50 have passed through in recent weeks.

Some were suffering oncological, neurological and other problems before the war and fled in the early days. Others are being treated for wounds incurred as a result of the invasion.

The Vatican says Francis travelled the short distance up the hill to the hospital on Saturday afternoon. He met with all the young patients in their rooms before returning back to the Vatican.