Russian forces stepped up shelling of cities in Ukraine's centre, north and south, a Ukrainian official said, as a second attempt to evacuate besieged civilians collapsed.
With the Ukrainian leader urging his people to take to the streets and fight, Russian President Vladimir Putin shifted blame for the war to Ukraine, saying Moscow's invasion could be halted "only if Kyiv ceases hostilities."
"There can be no `green corridors' because only the sick brain of the Russians decides when to start shooting and at whom," Interior Ministry adviser Anton Gerashchenko said on Telegram. He later urged the West to tighten its sanctions on Russia, saying that "the audacity of the aggressor is a clear signal" that existing sanctions are not enough.
As he has often done, Putin blamed Ukraine for the war, telling Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday that Kyiv needed to stop all hostilities and fulfill "the well-known demands of Russia." The men agreed in principle to a "dialogue" involving Russia, Ukraine and the UN's atomic watchdog, according to a French official who spoke on condition of anonymity, in line with the presidency's practices. Potential talks on the issue are to be organized in the coming days, he said.
After the cease-fire in Mariupol failed to hold Saturday, Russian forces intensified their shelling of the city and dropped massive bombs on residential areas of Chernihiv, a city north of Kyiv, Ukrainian officials said. "We saw everything: houses burning, all the people sitting in basements," said Yelena Zamay, who fled to one of the self-proclaimed republics in eastern Ukraine held by pro-Russian separatists. "No communication, no water, no gas, no light, no water. There was nothing."
U.S. officials say Washington is discussing ways to get the planes to Ukraine in a complex scenario that would include sending American-made F-16s to former Soviet bloc nations, particularly Poland, that are now members of NATO. Those countries would then send Ukraine their own Soviet-era MiGs, which Ukrainian pilots are trained to fly.
Ukraine's military is greatly outmatched by Russia's, but its professional and volunteer forces have fought back with fierce tenacity. In Kyiv, volunteers lined up Saturday to join the military.Onlookers in Chernihiv cheered as they watched a Russian military plane fall from the sky and crash, according to video released by the Ukrainian government. In Kherson, hundreds of protesters waved blue and yellow Ukrainian flags and shouted, "Go home.
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