Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said that around 40,000 people had been evacuated from a number of Ukrainian cities on Thursday but accused Russian forces of targeting a humanitarian corridor in the city of Mariupol.

"One of the main tasks for us today was the organization of humanitarian corridors: Sumy, Trostyanets, Krasnopillya, Irpin, Bucha, Hostomel, Izyum. Within this day, we have already managed to evacuate almost 40,000 our people, to give them security in Poltava, Kyiv, Cherkasy, Zaporizhzhia, Dnipro, Lviv," Zelenskyy said in a video address on his Telegram channel.