Deputy Prime Minister, Minister for Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories of Ukraine, Iryna Vereshchuk, announced that as of the morning of 16 March, Ukraine had not received a response to proposals sent to the International Committee of the Red Cross to open humanitarian corridors today.
In the last few days, the occupiers began shelling humanitarian convoys with buses, gathering places in the settlements where we were planning the evacuation.
"The occupiers are also taking hostages. In such conditions, we cannot transport people safely," she said.
Opening humanitarian corridors from Izyum and Mariupol is still not resolved.
"At the same time, we continue working on routes for delivering humanitarian aid to residents of cities and villages of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kharkiv, Kyiv, Chernihiv, Sumy and Kherson regions," Vereshchuk added.
The EU Commissioner for the Environment, Oceans and Fisheries, Virginijus Sinkevičius, promised to ask the Red Cross why the organization does not work in Ukraine.