UPDATE THREAD: A temporary ceasefire to establish humanitarian corridors was established for the cities of Mariupol and Volnovakha from 9am -4pm today.
The corridors will allow for the evacuation of civilians and delivery of food and medical supplies to cities which have been
(2) surrounded and besieged by Russian forces and without food, water, heat, and electricity for several days.
The pre-invasion population was 440k for Mariupol and 21k for Volnovakha. I don’t know how many citizens made it out of the towns before they were surrounded.
(3) However, both cities are along Russia’s Crimea axis on the Black Sea coast, so it’s unlikely that many civilians had time to leave before Russian troops were already threatening the area early in the invasion.
Civilian evacuations began in the towns at 11am (local), giving
(4) a potential nearly 500k people roughly 5 hours to leave the besieged cities.
Mariupol in the south and Kharkiv in the north have been the two cities Russian troops have made the heaviest use of indiscriminate fires, with conclusive evidence verifying the use of
(5) of cluster munitions.
Based on OSINT, I’d estimate that roughly 10k -12k Ukrainian regular troops and an unknown number of irregular civil defense forces are still defending Mariupol.
I haven’t seen enough info to estimate the defense force in Volnovakha.
(6) Based on their troop dispositions in recent days, I believe it is *highly likely* that Russia will make heavy use of indiscriminate fires and wholesale carpet bombing of the towns at the conclusion of the ceasefire.
The one caveat to this is that the volume of missile and
(7) bomb strikes appears to have reduced across Ukraine in the last 2-3 days.
I believe it is *highly unlikely* that Russia has adopted a more humane warfare strategy and potentially the decrease in airstrikes could indicate Russia is suffering from munitions shortages.
(8) UPDATE: Not even an hour into the purported ceasefire, evacuations were cancelled due to continued shelling by Russia.
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