Asecond attempt to evacuate civilians from a southern city under siege for a week has failed due to continued Russian shelling.
Evacuations from the port city of Mariupol were scheduled to begin at noon local time (10 a.m. GMT) during a 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. local ceasefire, Ukrainian military authorities said earlier Sunday.
Interior Ministry adviser Anton Gerashchenko said the planned evacuations along designated humanitarian corridors were halted because of an ongoing assault.
“There can be no ‘green corridors’ because only the sick brain of the Russians decides when to start shooting and at whom,“ he said on Telegram.
Meanwhile President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed that a Russian airstrike had destroyed a civilian airport in the regional capital Vinnytsia with eight rocket strikes earlier today
Separately, Ukraine’s national security service says Russian forces are firing rockets at a physics institute in the city of Kharkiv that contains nuclear material and a reactor.
The security service said a strike on the nuclear facility could lead to “large-scale ecological disaster.”
