The invading troops have, however, continued to deploy around many cities and even, according to the Pentagon, increased their bombardment to compensate for their weak advance.
This is causing
"an increasingly significant impact on the human toll for civilians
," warned the US Department of Defense.
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LIVE - War in Ukraine: follow the latest developments in the conflict
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According to the UN, since the start of the conflict, 474 civilians have been killed in Ukraine, including around 20 children, but the real toll is much higher.
On the Russian side, General Vitali Guerassimov is said to have died in the fighting near Kharkiv, Ukraine's second city.
This is the second senior Russian officer to be killed in two weeks of war.
According to US intelligence, there were between 2,000 and 4,000 Russian military personnel killed.
Heavy fighting took place in Izium (east), but Russian troops had to retreat after bombing civilian infrastructure, according to Ukrainian sources.
Humanitarian corridors
In Sumy, 350 km northeast of Kiev, where more than 20 people died Monday evening in Russian airstrikes, part of the 250,000 inhabitants were able to start leaving the city thanks to a humanitarian corridor, according to regional authorities .
Ukraine, on the other hand, accused the Russians of not respecting another humanitarian corridor supposed to allow the evacuation of some 300,000 civilians stuck in the strategic port of Mariupol, in the south-east of the country, on the Sea of Azov, where a 6-year-old died of dehydration under the ruins of her home.
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Moscow announced Tuesday morning the establishment of humanitarian corridors in Sumy, Mariupol, Kiev, Kharkiv and Cherniguiv.
But most of these escape routes pass through Russia or neighboring Belarus, an ally of Moscow, an unacceptable option for Ukraine.
Kharkiv, 50 km from the Russian border, is still holding out, despite an encirclement and intense Russian bombardments.
Kiev too, where President Volodymyr Zelensky denounced the
broken “promises”
of Westerners to protect his country.
Many women with their children
If western Ukraine is for the moment largely spared by the fighting, Russian troops are leading an offensive from the allied separatist territories of Donetsk and Luhansk, in the east of the country.
The pro-Russian separatists in the latter region have seized eight new localities and those in Donetsk now control
"the Ossoviakhim sector"
in the port of Mariupol, the Russian army announced.
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While the United States has decided to ban imports of Russian oil and gas, there is an exodus from many points in the territory.
In Boutcha, at the gates of Kiev, without gas, water or electricity, where food is beginning to run out, many women with their children are trying to flee the war.
In Mykolaiv, also to the south, as well as in Irpin, near the capital, where hundreds of people, according to AFP, waited to cross a river on makeshift bridges, towards Kiev, the only direction still unoccupied by the Russian army.
