Ukraine sends evacuation buses to besieged city

Ukraine's army has been recapturing territory. In the town of Trostyanets AFP reporters saw dazed residents emerge from their homes to search for food

Ukraine said Thursday it was sending dozens of buses to evacuate civilians from the besieged city of Mariupol after a Russian ceasefire announcement, but dismissed Kremlin promises to scale back attacks on the capital saying forces were simply regrouping to target the east.

Tens of thousands of civilians are trapped in besieged Mariupol with little food, water or medicine, and previous attempts to agree a humanitarian corridor have failed, despite international pressure.

"Tonight, we were informed by the International Committee of the Red Cross that Russia is ready to open access" to a humanitarian corridor from Mariupol to Zaporizhzhia via the Russian-controlled port of Berdiansk, she said in video posted on Telegram. 

President Volodymyr Zelensky told his war-torn nation to brace for a new Russian onslaught in the eastern Donbas region.

"We will fight for every metre of our land," he said.

Western intelligence agencies have been keen to underscore Russia's military failings, and to push suggestions that President Vladimir Putin is being misled by his own fearful advisors about battlefield reverses.

Citing US intelligence, White House Communications Director Kate Bedingfield said Putin "felt misled by the Russian military".

Its focus instead has turned towards the east, and capturing more towns and cities in Donbas including Mariupol -- even as the long-range assault on other cities continues.

Russia's ministry of defence on Thursday claimed that was the plan all along.

He said the aim was to degrade and tie up Ukrainian forces so they could not be used "in the main direction of our Armed Forces in Donbas". "All these goals have been met," he added.

"I think we are now seeing the Russian strategy changing," said Marcus Hellyer of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a former Department of Defence and intelligence official. "They are focusing more on the east so it may be that they have realised they can't completely defeat Ukraine."

Ukraine's general staff on Thursday reported that some Russian units had already left northwestern Ukraine for Moscow-allied Belarus, and there was a "regrouping" of units of the Eastern Military District.

Since 2014 Russia has backed two similar breakaway Donbas statelets in Lugansk and Donetsk and recently recognised their independence.

Russia has long sought a land link between the republics and also-occupied Crimea via Mariupol, which is now encircled by Russian forces.

An International Committee of the Red Cross official told AFP the facility was a warehouse but aid stored there had been distributed.

As generals and political leaders reassess their strategies for a new phase in the war, the toll on ordinary Ukrainians is still coming into harrowing focus.

Irpin's mayor Oleksandr Markushyn said at least 200 people had been killed there since the war began.

"There was nothing left to eat in the town, no water and no electricity," said Pavlo, who spent the past month hunkered down in his basement.

The head of the UN Human Rights Council has warned Moscow that "indiscriminate attacks are prohibited under international humanitarian law and may amount to war crimes".

Both sides initially said the Istanbul meeting had made progress, but the Kremlin on Wednesday played down hopes of a breakthrough.

Still, Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu on Thursday said a higher-level meeting "at least at the level of foreign ministers" could happen in a week or two.

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