There are 2 million refugees; humanitarian corridors not yet operating

John Paul Duch

Correspondent

Newspaper La Jornada
Wednesday, March 9, 2022, p. 4

Moscow. Once again, Russia and Ukraine blamed each other for the failure yesterday of a new attempt to evacuate the civilian population, and of the 10 humanitarian corridors opened by Moscow, only one functioned from the city of Sumy to Poltava, also in Ukraine, and from there to the border with Poland. But no Ukrainian came out.

Along this corridor, according to General Mikhail Mizintsev, head of the Russian Federation Defense Command Center, thanks to the unprecedented efforts undertaken by the Russian military to ensure security on that routecould be evacuated 723 people, including 576 nationals from India, 115 from China, 20 from Jordan and 12 from Tunisia.

Later, the military assured that more than 20 thousand cars entered Russia from the side of Ukraine, Donietsk and Lugansk, of them 777 in the last 24 hours.

Hours later, the deputy head of the office of the President of Ukraine, Kirilo Tymoshenko, said that 61 buses left Sumy for Poltava. Deputy Prime Minister Irina Vereschuk said that some 5,000 Ukrainians and another 1,700 foreigners were brought to safety and evacuated from Sumy, in the northeast of the Slavic country, the Ukrainian Unian agency reported.

Meanwhile, the Russian Center for Defense Management reported that the evacuation of 223 foreign citizens from the Ukrainian province of Kherson, to the south, was completed, and that among them are 188 Turks, 15 Egyptians, eight Italians, six Pakistanis, five Indians and a Brazilian.

Since the war began 13 days ago, according to data provided by Mizintsev, 174,000 people have fled to Russia, from combat zones in Ukraine, and especially from the people’s republics of Donietsk and Lugansk.

Russia claims to have a database with more than 2 million 541 thousand applications from Ukrainian and foreign citizens who desperately asking to be evacuated from 1,917 locations in Ukraine, in apparent response to misgivings about the route proposed by Moscow for various humanitarian corridors.

However, Mizintsev assures, for understandable reasons we cannot pass this data on to the Ukrainian authorities, since as soon as this database falls into the hands of the nationalists, all those who asked for help will suffer persecution, humiliation, torture or will be shot. Nor, he adds, can we share that information with the UN, because may fall into the hands of neo-Nazis.

Information about humanitarian corridors from Kiev, Chernigov, Sumy, Kharkov and Mariupol will be sent to Vereschuk, Mizintsev assured.

Vereschuk earlier said that the Ukrainian authorities had been unable to evict civilians from Mariupol. In turn, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense accused Russia of not respecting the humanitarian corridor of that strategic port city.

The Russian general maintains that “territorial defense battalions continue to hold more than 4.5 million civilians and nearly 2,000 foreigners as hostages as a ‘human shield’.”

Kiev, for its part, offers a different version. He claims that he proposed to Moscow and the International Red Cross alternative evacuation routes to the western border, which, according to Vereschuk, Russia refused to approve and only allowed foreign students to leave Sumy.

The spokesman for the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, Oleg Nikolenko, reported that Russian troops bombed the convoy of eight cargo trucks with humanitarian aid for the inhabitants of Mariupol, besieged by Russian troops, and 30 buses to evacuate civilians that left Zaporizhia. The convoy arrived in Mariupol in the evening, as the Russian army reported that the Ukrainian military is preventing people from leaving the city.

According to data from the United Nations, updated as of March 8, more than 2 million Ukrainians have fled the war to other countries, including Poland, which has already received more than 1.2 million; Hungary, 191 thousand; Slovakia, 141 thousand; Moldova, 83 thousand; Romania, 82 thousand; other European nations, 210 thousand. The UN also includes in its statistics the Ukrainians who have taken refuge in Russia, 99,300, and in Belarus, only 453.

Is an agreement possible?

Regarding at least one of Russia’s demands, President Zelensky said on Tuesday that Ukraine is willing to assume the status of a neutral country only if it receives binding security guarantees from both NATO and non-NATO countries. Russia, according to what can be read in the transcript of his interview with the US television channel ABC, broadcast this morning by the press service of the Ukrainian presidency.

Zelensky proposes: “Ukraine must be part of a collective security treaty with all its neighbors and with the participation of the United States, France, Germany and Turkey. That will give guarantees not only to Ukraine. Russia will also have the guarantees that it is asking for all the time…”.

More complicated, but not impossible, is to find compromise formulas that satisfy both parties in relation to the other two demands that the Kremlin raised in the third round of negotiations, held on Monday: accept Crimea’s membership in Russia and recognize its independence. from Donetsk and Luhansk.

It is also important to me how people who want to remain part of Ukraine will live there. You have to discuss it. Just like looking for compromises on the Crimean issue. We cannot recognize that Crimea is part of Russia. It is difficult for Russia to recognize that Crimea is the territory of Ukraine.

Never before had Kiev hinted that it would be willing to negotiate an understanding on these issues, which could have serious consequences within Ukraine, where there are sectors that firmly maintain that both Crimea and Donbas are Ukrainian territories.

At the same time, as Zelensky assumes a more flexible position, he tries to probe the way to agree a ceasefire with Russia. In this context, his adviser Mikhaylo Podolyak, spokesman for the Ukrainian negotiators, stated that we will not accept any ultimatum. And he specified: Our position is very simple: the negotiations must be real and adequate. In that case they become concrete and do not admit impositions.