A humanitarian corridor will be opened in besieged Severodonetsk, a Russian general has said, as fierce fighting rages for control of the city.
Ukrainian authorities say they want to evacuate more wounded residents but fear it is not possible amid the current attacks on the city.
Col Gen Mikhail Mizintsev said evacuees would be taken to the town of Svatovo, 60 kilometres north into territory under the control of Russian and separatist forces.
He said the plan was made after Ukraine called for establishing an evacuation corridor leading to Ukrainian-controlled territory.
He said a mass evacuation of civilians from Severodonetsk now was “simply not possible” due to the relentless shelling and fighting in the city.
Ukrainian forces have been pushed to the industrial outskirts of the city because of “the scorched earth method and heavy artillery the Russians are using,” he said.
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Russian troops control about 80 per cent of the eastern Ukrainian city and have destroyed all three bridges leading out of the city, said Sergiy Gaiday, Governor of the eastern Luhansk region.
“There is still an opportunity for evacuation of the wounded, communication with the Ukrainian military and local residents,” he said.
He said Russian forces had not yet blocked off the city.
About 12,000 people remain in Severodonetsk, compared to its pre-war population of 100,000. More than 500 civilians are sheltering in the Azot chemical plant, which is being relentlessly pounded by the Russians, said Mr Gaiday.
Seventy civilians were evacuated from the Luhansk region over the last day, he said.
A Russian general said a humanitarian corridor will be opened on Wednesday to evacuate civilians from the Azot chemical plant in Severodonetsk.
Col Gen Mizintsev, head of the National Defence Management Centre, is accused by Ukraine of human rights beaches while commanding troops during the long siege of Mariupol, Ukraine’s key port on the Sea of Azov that has been taken over by the Russians.
Russian forces have in the last few weeks pressed hard to capture Ukraine’s eastern industrial Donbas area, which borders Russia and is made up of the regions of Luhansk and Donetsk.
“The situation is difficult,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelesnkyy said on Tuesday. “Our task is to fight back.”
Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, one of the aid organisations supplying food to the Donbas, said fighting in the past few weeks made regular food deliveries impossible.
Now, he said, the remaining civilians in the city “are almost entirely cut off from aid supplies after the destruction of the last bridge".
