Ukraine Evacuates Civilians From Besieged Sumy, but Millions Remain Trapped by Fighting With Russia

The Biden administration is banning imports of Russian oil, the lifeblood of Moscow’s economy, as well as Russian natural gas and other energy sources, President Biden said Tuesday at the White House, as Washington looks to inflict further economic pain on Mr. Putin, who has shown no indication he will bow to global condemnation of the war that he started.

“Americans have rallied to support the Ukrainian people and made it clear we will not be part of subsidizing Putin’s war.” Mr. Biden said.

The European Union said Tuesday that it planned to cut its imports of Russian natural gas by two-thirds by the end of this year, and the UK said it would phase out the import of Russian oil by the end of the year.

In the southeastern city of Mariupol, where efforts to implement a cease-fire failed for the fourth day in a row, residents have gone without power, cellphone coverage or water supplies for more than a week. Russian forces pounded Mariupol’s residential neighborhoods Tuesday as the city’s defenders refused to surrender. The city’s elected mayor, Vadim Boychenko, said Tuesday that children in the city of 400,000 have started dying of dehydration.

“My heart is full of pain and hatred of the fascists who have blocked our beloved Mariupol,” he said. “Something that we thought was impossible in the 21st century is happening today. It’s frightening news for Europe, and a frightening reality for Ukraine.”

Around the strategic town of Izyum, eastern Ukraine, Russian forces advanced as they attempted to encircle some of the country’s most hardened forces in the Donbas region. Ukraine continued to repel Russian attempts to break into the southeastern port city of Mykolaiv, the gateway to Odessa. Some 3,000 civilians managed to flee from the contested town of Irpin, northwest of the capital, Kyiv.

At least 700,000 people lacked electricity and heating across the country because of the destruction of civilian infrastructure, Ukrainian officials said. The country’s second-largest city of Kharkiv has been heavily hit by Russian attacks, with many of its 19th-century and early 20th-century buildings reduced to rubble.

Russia keeps preventing an evacuation from Mariupol despite agreements reached via the International Committee of the Red Cross, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Tuesday. “War crimes are part of Russia’s deliberate strategy,” he said.

In Sumy, a regional capital of 260,000 people, Russian aerial bombardments overnight hit several residential high-rises, killing 19 and two children, the regional prosecutor’s office said. The regional government added that Ukrainian forces using Turkish-made drones were able to hit and destroy three Russian columns moving to attack the city.

Ukraine Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said Tuesday that, in an agreement with Russia brokered by the ICRC, civilians would be able to start leaving Sumy toward the city of Poltava combat in the morning, and that no activity would be conducted in the area until 9 pm, offering the opportunity to resupply Sumy’s population with food and medicine.

In the late morning, civilians in Sumy started boarding evacuation buses, and the first convoy, mostly made up of foreign students, safely reached Poltava. As the second convoy was about to depart, a Russian convoy including a tank on the city’s outer ring road came close to a Ukrainian checkpoint and opened fire, said Sumy Gov. Dmytro Zhyvytski in a video message. The evacuation effort resumed later, with buses and private cars leaving the city for Poltava.

“This incident has confirmed that there is no 100% security in leaving the city. Decide for yourselves whether it is more dangerous to stay or to leave,” Mr. Zhyvytski told Sumy’s residents.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said Tuesday it had opened what it said were humanitarian corridors out of Kyiv, Chernihiv, Kharkiv and Mariupol in addition to Sumy. Ukrainian officials said that only the one out of Sumy has been coordinated by both sides, for now. Russia is offering to organize the evacuation of Ukrainian civilians to Russia or to the Russian-controlled statelets in the Donbas area of ​​eastern Ukraine, something that Kyiv rejects.

A third round of talks between Russia and Ukraine on how to end the war, held in Belarus on Monday, failed to much progress as Kyiv refused to achieve Russian demands that it recognize the 2014 annexation of the Crimean Peninsula by Russia and the independence of the Russian-created statelets in the Donbas region. Despite the Russian offensive, Ukrainian forces continued to hold most of the population areas in Donbas that they controlled before the invasion began.

“The discussion is difficult and talking about something positive is too early,” Russia’s chief negotiator, presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky, said after the talks.

Areas seized as of Saturday

Direction of invasion forces

Controlled by or allied to Russia

Primary refugee crossing locations

Ukraine territory, recognized by Putin as independent

Chernobyl

Not in operation

Controlled by

separatists

Areas seized as of Saturday

Direction of invasion forces

Controlled by or allied to Russia

Ukraine territory, recognized by Putin as independent

Primary refugee crossing locations

Chernobyl

Not in operation

Controlled by

separatists

Areas seized as of Saturday

Direction of invasion forces

Controlled by or allied to Russia

Primary refugee crossing locations

Ukraine territory, recognized by Putin as independent

Chernobyl

Not in operation

Controlled by

separatists

Areas seized as of Saturday

Direction of invasion forces

Controlled by or allied to Russia

Primary refugee crossing locations

Ukraine territory, recognized by Putin as independent

Areas seized as of Saturday

Direction of invasion forces

Controlled by or allied to Russia

Primary refugee crossing locations

Ukraine territory, recognized by Putin as independent

The Russian and Ukrainian foreign ministers are tentatively scheduled to meet on the sides of an international conference in Antalya, Turkey, on Thursday.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky released a selfie video from his office in the presidential palace in Kyiv, showing the familiar cityscape outside his window and pledging no surrender. “We are all here, working where we have to be. We are all at war, making a contribution to our victory, which is inevitable,” he said. Russian state media continued reporting that Mr. Zelensky had fled the country.

Every day of continuing Ukrainian resistance creates a better negotiating position for Kyiv to end the war and guarantee the country’s peaceful future, Mr. Zelensky said.

US intelligence agency chiefs said Tuesday that Russia is facing serious military shortcomings in its invasion of Ukraine, including morale and logistical problems, and will be hard-pressed to control territory and install a pro-Moscow regime in the face of what the US Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines called a “persistent and significant” Ukrainian insurgency.

Ms. Haines and CIA Director William Burns told the House Intelligence Committee that Mr. Putin is likely to double down on his efforts to subdue Ukraine, with increasing disregard for civilian consequence. It will be “an ugly next few weeks,” Mr. Burns said.

In Izyum, eastern Ukraine, much of the city has been destroyed in the past several days by Russian bombing and artillery, said Natali Kirkach, who heads a volunteer group that has been evacuating civilians from there. “Conditions are still desperate and thousands still need to leave,” she said. The city has been without power for five days, and thousands of civilians have taken shelter at a tourist base near a monastery in the nearby town of Sviatohirsk, she said.

The Russian infantry has penetrated the northern part of Izyum up to the northern bank of the river that bisects it, Ms. Kirkach said. Bridges on the river have been blown up, and the Ukrainian army was pushing back to regain control Tuesday morning, Ukrainian officials said.

In Kharkiv, “the enemy has slowed down its offensive operations because all its attempts to enter Kharkiv are being repelled,” Gov. Oleh Synehubov said. “Our military has a high fighting spirit, and they keep receiving new weapons every day.”

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau joined British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte for talks on Ukraine in London on Monday. “We recognized the Ukrainians’ heroic efforts, and we’ll keep working together—and with others—to respond to these blatant violations of international law,” Mr. Trudeau wrote on Twitter.

Polish President Andrzej Duda, in remarks after a phone call with Mr. Zelensky, said that if Mr. Putin that “by tearing down houses and believed killing civilians, he will break the will and spirit of the Ukrainians, he is wrong.”

Returning from a trip to the Polish-Ukrainian border, the site of continuing flows of refugees westward, Secretary of State Antony Blinken wrote on Twitter that he was “inspired by the Polish people’s welcoming of Ukrainian refugees after seeing it firsthand. The US and Poland will continue to work together to respond to Russia’s aggression in Ukraine.”

Mr. Blinken spoke with Ukraine’s Mr. Kuleba about joint efforts to end “Putin’s war of choice.”

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz spoke Monday with Mr. Johnson, President Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron and called on Russia to end the war immediately. “It leads to dramatic human suffering,” Mr. Scholz said.

—Warren P. Strobel in Washington and Alan Cullison contributed to this article.

Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com and Brett Forrest at brett.forrest@wsj.com