US President Joe Biden has announced a ban on Russian oil and other energy imports, a significant move in piling pressure on President Vladimir Putin to halt his forces’ devastating assault on Ukraine.
Ukraine’s government accused Russian forces of shelling a humanitarian corridor that Russia had promised to open to let residents flee the besieged port of Mariupol.
The civilian death toll in the conflict mounted and, with the war in its 13th day, the number of refugees who have fled Ukraine to neighbouring countries surged past two million.
“Russia may continue to grind out its advance at a horrible price but this much is already clear: Ukraine will never be a victory for Putin,” Mr Biden told reporters at the White House.
“Putin may be able to take a city but he’ll never be able to hold the country.”
Addressing the UK parliament via videolink, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy urged the world to increase the sanctions.
He said his people would fight to the end against the Russian invaders but it needed help, including no-fly zones.
“The question for us now is to be or not to be,” said Mr Zelenskiy, quoting Shakespeare.
“I can give you a definitive answer: it’s definitely to be.”
Lawmakers gave him a standing ovation.
Sanctions imposed over the invasion have already cut off Russia from international trade and financial markets.
Tweet from @BBCPolitics
Russia is the world’s biggest exporter of oil and natural gas, and until now its energy exports had been exempted from the international sanctions.
Announcing the US ban on Russian energy imports, Mr Biden said: “That means Russian oil will no longer be acceptable in US ports and the American people will deal another powerful blow to Putin’s war machine.”
The US is not a leading buyer of Russian oil but Mr Biden has worked with allies in Europe, who are far more reliant on it, to isolate Russia’s energy-heavy economy and Mr Putin.
The UK announced shortly before Biden’s remarks that it would phase out the import of Russian oil and oil products by the end of 2022.
The EU also published plans to cut its reliance on Russian gas by two thirds this year.
In Mariupol, hundreds of thousands of people have been sheltering under bombardment without water or power for more than a week.
Many tried to leave on Tuesday along a safe corridor but Ukraine said they came under Russian fire.
“Ceasefire violated! Russian forces are now shelling the humanitarian corridor from Zaporizhzhia to Mariupol,” Ukraine’s foreign ministry spokesperson Oleg Nikolenko wrote on Twitter.
Mr Zelenskiy said a child had died of dehydration in Mariupol because water was cut off.
This could not be independently verified.
Russia opened a separate corridor allowing residents out of the eastern city of Sumy on Tuesday, the first successful evacuation under such a safe route.
Buses left Sumy for Poltava further west, only hours after a Russian air strike which regional officials said had hit a residential area and killed 21 people.
Reuters could not verify the incident.
Russia said 723 people had left the region via the Sumy-Poltava corridor, including 576 Indian citizens, in a first convoy.
Residents were also leaving Irpin, a frontline Kyiv suburb.
The United Nations human rights office said it had verified 1335 civilian casualties in Ukraine, including 474 killed and 861 injured, since the invasion kicked off on February 24.
There were allegations of hundreds of civilian casualties in Volnovakha, Mariupol and other urban areas from bombing and shelling of residential areas, it said.
Russia denies targeting civilians and describes its actions as a “special operation” to disarm Ukraine and unseat leaders it calls neo-Nazis.
Ukraine and its allies call this a baseless pretext to invade a country of 44 million people.
The corridors to let civilians escape and allow aid reach besieged areas have been the main subject of talks between Russian and Ukrainian delegations.
The Interfax news agency said Russia was opening humanitarian corridors for the cities of Sumy, Mariupol, Chernihiv, Kharkiv and the capital Kyiv.
Ukraine has rejected Russian proposals for Kharkiv and Kyiv that would lead evacuees to Russia or its ally Belarus.
Earlier attempts at the weekend to allow residents to leave Mariupol failed, with each side accusing the other of continuing to fire.
-AAP
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