this is newsday on the bbc. our headlines: on the frontline in ukraine, north west of the capital kyiv, its soldiers are digging in with russian forces nowjust a few kilometres away. are today s shells, thousands of ukrainians and international students from the city of sumy in the north east of the country have able to escape after a russian ceasefire was put in place. sarah ransford is in october, where people have been arriving from sumy. it must have felt like the longest ride of their lives. 12 hours to escape a besieged city, driven the long route round to avoid the fighting. many were medical students from india, just relieved to flee sumy after days under russian fire. but anna is ukrainian.
an act of war. bigger picture, though, i think what s super important to look at is what the current situation is. the first week, we were talking about russian sort of setbacks in terms of three fronts and a coup, a big failure. we too were seeing a very conventional invasion. i think that s what we need to look at today. in terms of kyiv, we talked about the convoy. it was our big discussion point last week, but now what you re starting to see is the russians have gone to week two, conventional warfare, standard invasion approach. now they re advancing from chernihiv. they are advancing and from this corridor here, you mentioned sumy, the town of sumy, kransing from the east of kyiv. there are also reports that these troops here from the russians, that convoy that s been backed up, trying to move around to the west, essentially encircle kyiv. this could look a lot like what we see in mariupol down here in the south which is siege warfare, like cal was talking about, knocking out powe
tragedy and it is a tragedy because less of this story will now be known to the world. what s happening in the country today is a further disintegration of what we ve been seeing. in the city of mariupol, there was a little bit of success, 200 cars got out, some 2,000 people got out, but 400,000 people there remain, and russian soldiers have now taken the main hospital in that city. they re actually occupying that hospital, and so 400 patients who are in that hospital are either not receiving the treatment they should or are unable to leave. it is emblematic of what we re seeing across the country. we saw a little bit of positive news from the city of sumy. ten buses, at least, got out of there today. ferrying people out of that city. that is also some good news but all of this on the backdrop of what is happening across the country, which is a heavy bombardment of these civilian areas, especially in kyiv. we have multiple apartment buildings that were shelled overnight. it was one yes
the other news that we were talking about is sumy. there have been airstrikes up here near the city of sumy. now there is this humanitarian corridor that they ve tried to open up south, baltova right there. from a military standpoint, what are the conversations around this? well, for a military organization that follows the geneva convention, that s a no fly no go zone. you don t go anywhere near it. you don t shoot anywhere near it. in my view the russians are using that as a way to bring their spies in. let the refugees go out, let them bring their logistics in. human shields. you re worried about the russians capitalizing on that. the ukrainians, how much do they need it in order to save lives? they don t want to go to russia. the only thing that s going to happen, they re going to have pictures taken of being liberated from ukraine. again, these are the proposed russian humanitarian corridors they were asking for. they go out to russian
cnn s sal muma abdel aziz has o report. reporter: they are two tiny to understand the meaning of war, but these orphans are already victim to its cruelty. they re among the 71 children that were rescued from the hard hit northern city of sumy. many are disabled. all under the age of 4, some requiring constant medical attention. these are the kids from a sumy orfj, the doctor in the video says. they were evacuated yesterday and miraculously they brought them here to kyiv. their journey was very difficult, he says. for two weeks care takers sheltered the babies and toddlers from russian bombardment in a basement. and when a humanitarian corridor finally opened they made the dangerous journey here to the capital. each little one arrived with an