Buses carried civilians out of one embattled Ukrainian city Tuesday and supplies toward another, as officials tried to move people away from a Russian onslaught and ease the dire humanitarian situation for those still stuck. But reports of renewed Russian attacks on the port of Mariupol threatened to again derail the efforts.
On the 13th day of the invasion, Europe’s worst refugee crisis since World War II grew even more severe, with U.N. officials reporting that 2 million people have now fled Ukraine.
Demands for ways to safely evacuate civilians have surged along with intensifying shelling by Russian forces, who have made significant advances in southern Ukraine but stalled in some other regions. Efforts to put in place cease-fires along humanitarian corridors have repeatedly failed amid Russian shelling.
Since the invasion began, more than 400 civilian deaths have been recorded by the U.N. human rights office, which said the true number is much higher. In addition to the humanitarian disaster unfolding in Ukraine, the fighting has sent energy prices surging worldwide and stocks plummeting and threatened the food supply and livelihoods of people around the globe who rely on crops farmed in the fertile Black Sea region.
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