Ukraine's deputy prime minister, Iryna Vereshchuk, said Thursday that it's impossible to evacuate people from two cities, including Mariupol, where a maternity and children's hospital was bombed Wednesday. 

"The most difficult situation is in Volnovakha and Mariupol. It is not possible to organize humanitarian corridors from there, these cities are a real humanitarian catastrophe," she said in a post on Telegram. 

Both cities are in the Donetsk region. Mariupol is on the north coast of the Black Sea in southeastern Ukraine; Volnovakha is about 40 miles north of Mariupol. 

Vereshchuk said 83,000 people have been evacuated from other Ukrainian cities over the last two days.

A regional governor in eastern Ukraine, Oleh Synegubov, said Thursday that the Russian military had blocked Ukrainian civilians from evacuating territory in the town of Izyum. He said Russia didn't comply with the terms of the "green corridor" and continued to attack the civilian population. Still, Ukrainian authorities were able to evacuate more than 1,600 people on 44 buses, he said. 

Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, slammed the Biden administration's response to Ukraine's request for aircraft as it tries to shore up its defenses against Russian forces. 

“I simply do not understand the logic for not getting the MiGs to the Ukrainians immediately.” Romney said at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing Thursday. “It makes no sense.” 

The U.S. rejected an offer from Poland on Wednesday to transfer its Soviet-era MiG-29 fighter jets to bolster Ukraine's air force. 

Romney acknowledged concerns that Russian President Vladimir Putin could further escalate the war but insisted that "it’s time for him to be fearful of what we might do." 

"This is war. People are dying. We need to get this aircraft immediately to the people of Ukraine," he said.

Residents of the besieged port city of Mariupol are running low on basic necessities, the International Committee of the Red Cross said Thursday, describing the situation as "increasingly dire and desperate."

Food, water, heat, electricity and medical care supplies are scant among the city's approximately 400,000 residents, the organization said, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine stretched into its third week. 

Sasha Volkov, the head of the humanitarian agency's delegation in Mariupol, detailed dwindling resources and said diabetes and cancer patients were not able to get much-needed medications in an audio message recorded on Wednesday and shared by the Red Cross.

“Many have no water at all for drinking,” he said. “Some people still have food, but I’m not sure for how long it will last.” 

Volkov said the siege has left families desperate for relief.

“People started to attack each other for food,” he said.

LONDON — More than 2 million people had fled Ukraine as of Wednesday in what could soon become Europe’s biggest refugee crisis of the 21st century and the worst since World War II. A spokesperson for UNICEF said at least half of them are children, some of whom have been forced to travel on their own.

The U.N.’s refugee agency, UNHCR, welcomed the European Union's decision last week to offer temporary protection to Ukrainians and third-country nationals who have refugee or permanent residence status in Ukraine, offering them “immediate protection.”

While the bloc and countries neighboring Ukraine have been praised, however, other countries are being accused of falling behind, particularly Britain, after it acknowledged having issued just 300 visas to Ukrainians so far.

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Goldman Sachs on Thursday became the first major bank to announce plans to close operations in Russia over the war in Ukraine as other major financial firms consider exits.

"Goldman Sachs is winding down its business in Russia in compliance with regulatory and licensing requirements," Patrick Scanlan, a spokesman, said in an emailed statement. "We are focused on supporting our clients across the globe in managing or closing out pre-existing obligations in the market and ensuring the well-being of our people."

Goldman is continuing to trade corporate debt tied to Russia, but the bank itself will not be wagering on price movements, Bloomberg reported.

Citigroup said Wednesday that it was working to wind down its consumer banking business in Russia.

"We are continuing our previously announced efforts to exit our consumer banking business in Russia," Edward Skyler, the bank's executive vice president of global public affairs, wrote in a statement. "As we work toward that exit, we are operating that business on a more limited basis given current circumstances and obligations."

Western nations supplying weapons to Ukraine are creating a "colossal threat to themselves," Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Thursday.  

Speaking after a meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba ended with no signs of progress toward a cease-fire, Lavrov said that his country "did not attack Ukraine," and he criticized Western nations for supplying weapons to forces in the country.  

He added that complaints made by Moscow over the course of many years about "the situation" in Ukraine posing a direct threat to Russia had fallen on deaf dears. 

Kuleba, meanwhile, lamented the failure to reach a cease-fire agreement. 

"Unfortunately, FM Lavrov seemed to have come to talk, not to decide," he tweeted.

Residents evacuate the city of Irpin, north of Kyiv, on Thursday.

Five medical workers have been killed and at least 63 hospitals have been damaged since Russia launched its invasion, Ukraine's health minister said in a Facebook post Thursday.  

Viktor Liashko blamed the deaths on "the bullets of Russian terrorists."  

His comments came after Ukrainian officials said a Russian airstrike on a hospital had killed at least three people, including a child, on Wednesday.