translator: they are preparing to bomb odessa. russian people always used to come to odessa and they only knew warmth and generosity. and what s now actually bombs against odessa. this will be a war crime. this will be historical crime. let s get to cnn s nick payton walsh who joins us from odessa. nick, give us a sense of what you re seeing on the ground and odessa, it s a vital port? reporter: yeah, we have been hearing for days of the possibility of maybe an amphibious or naval a salt against this third largest city in ukraine. it s maritime to the outside world. you can t control ukraine if you don t have odessa as part of that. but so far throughout the night and this morning with horizontal snow a moment ago, it has been quiet. not the case, though, from where you just saw the report. at 5:00 this morning, a number
announcer: this is cnn breaking news. hello and a very warm welcome to our viewers joining us in the united states and around the world. i m isa soares with more of our breaking coverage on the war in ukraine. civilians across the country are facing a growing humanitarian crisis as stark as well as disturbing images show the harsh reality on the ground. but in just the last two hours, the russian defense ministry said it is opening humanitarian corridors from four ukrainian cities. you can see there on the your map including kyiv, mariupol. civilians passing through a checkpoint manned by ukrainian forces. we have seen people including children walking through on foot. who knows really how long they have been walking. we ve seen them pack buses,
this is just getting by the moment. they are running out of water. there is a huge electricity crisis as well, and the atms around the area according to students are not working. they have been talking about how they are running out of all the things i ve just spoken to you about. water crisis is a huge crisis there. it is a seven or eight-story hostel they are staying in. they rush to the bankers when the sirens go off. that s what life looks like for them right now. we spoke to a student earlier and this is what he had to say to cnn about their situation currently. if we can just listen in to that. translator: some students had made a video yesterday about leaving, but we convinced them to stay for the time being. we cannot stop them much longer, though. we cannot control them. our suffering is increasing day by day, and our problems are only increasing.
meore than a million ukrainians have fled their homes so far in the freezing conditions in the hope of a train to safety. he s 80 and staying on. he s a former para trooper in the soviet army. translator: i made mosul cocktails. i m a hunter with 40 years of experience. i have a medal left from the ussr. i hate them. invaders because of this. not to mention the fact that my grandson was bombed for a week in kharkiv. reporter: those people who make it on board now face a 600 mile journey to lviv. for those who don t, time and luck may be running out. sam kiley, cnn, saparisia.
millions of russians who understand that something terrible is going on, and who understand that they need this will turn to sources of information because they feel that this is a disaster. this is a catastrophe that has come to their homes. and the whole world is broken for them, for us, for me personally as well. staying in russia, more than 4500 people were detained across russia sunday in connection with anti-war protests. that is according to an independent human rights monitoring group tracking detentions in the country. that is st. petersburg, russia. video posted to social media shows anti-war protesters in a violent altercation you can see there with police. cnn geolocated and verified the authenticity of the video which was taken on sunday. cnn also contacted st. petersburg police to ask about the nature of the arrest, but it did not receive an immediate