The ceasefire is scheduled to last until nine pm Finnish time. Ukraine’s deputy prime minister urged Russia to keep its ceasefire.
Ukraine and Russia have today agreed a 12-hour ceasefire on six routes to evacuate the civilian population.
Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine Iryna Vereštšuk reported from the morning that attempts are being made to evacuate civilians from the area of several cities today, including Kiev, Zaporizhia and Mariupol.
The ceasefire is scheduled to affect the Energodar-Zaporizhia, Sumy-Poltava, Mariupol-Zaporizhia, Volnovakha-Pokrovsk routes. tells the BBC (you are switching to another service).
Ukraine hopes the ceasefire will be maintained
The evacuations were successful yesterday only from the cities of Sumy and Irpin. Evacuations are set to continue from Sumy today. An estimated 5,000 people were successfully evacuated from the city. Sumy’s evacuations were the first evacuations through security corridors in Ukraine since the Russian invasion began.
The evacuation of civilians from the Russian-besieged Mariupol did not succeed yesterday. The humanitarian situation in the city has long been described as catastrophic.
According to Ukraine, the evacuations of Mariupol failed yesterday because the Russians fired on an evacuation route. Russia, for its part, has accused Ukrainian troops of sabotaging the evacuations.
Indeed, Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Vereshchuk demanded that Russia maintain a ceasefire.
– I appeal to the Russian Federation: you have publicly committed to a ceasefire from 9 am to 9 pm. We have negative experiences that your commitments have not been kept, Vereshchuk said in a televised speech, according to the news agency Reuters.