Cars drive along the Zaporizhzhya highway on the outskirts of MariupolMOSCOW, March 18Vladimir Zelensky said that More than 35,000 residents have been evacuated from Mariupol. «More than 35,000 people have already been rescued from Mariupol,» he said in a video message on Friday. >More than 3.2 million people have left Ukraine, the UN reported, Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine Irina Vereshchuk said that nine humanitarian corridors had been agreed on Friday. According to her, gum corridors will be opened from Mariupol to Zaporozhye, from Sumy to Poltava, from Trostyanets, Lebedin, Konotop, the villages of Krasnopolye, Velyka Pisarevka to Poltava. Vereshchuk added that it is planned to deliver humanitarian aid to the cities of Balakleya and Izyum in the Kharkiv region. Russia launched a military operation in Ukraine on February 24. President Vladimir Putin called its goal «the protection of people who have been subjected to bullying and genocide by the Kiev regime for eight years.» For this, according to him, it is planned to carry out «demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine», to bring to justice all war criminals responsible for «bloody crimes against civilians» in Donbass. According to the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, the Armed Forces strike only at the military infrastructure and Ukrainian troops. With the support of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, the DPR and LPR groups are developing an offensive, but there is no talk of the occupation of Ukraine, the President of Russia emphasized. Against the backdrop of hostilities in a large number of cities and villages of Ukraine, a humanitarian catastrophe is emerging. The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation lays responsibility for this on the Kiev authorities, who refuse to coordinate the work of humanitarian corridors, as well as local nationalists, in some cases, according to the military department, holding civilians as human shields.
Almost 2.7 million Ukrainians asked to be evacuated to Russia
