Moscow announced the proposed escape routes from Kharkiv, Kyiv, Mariupol, and Sumy after Putin and Macron spoke by telephone on Sunday, saying the move was taken after a "personal request" by Macron. 

But the Elysee Palace said no such request was made and Macron accused Moscow of a "PR stunt" with its announcement. 

He added that promises to protect civilians only so that they could flee towards Russia were "hypocritical".

"I do not know many Ukrainians who want to go to Russia," he added, saying that full ceasefires to protect civilians were needed rather than corridors.

"All this is not serious, it is moral and political cynicism, which I find intolerable," he told LCI television in an interview.

AFP journalists saw thousands of civilians early Monday fleeing the fighting via an unofficial humanitarian corridor in Irpin, a strategic suburb west of Kyiv.

"I am so happy to have managed to get out," said Olga, a 48-year-old woman leaving with her two dogs.

Children and the elderly were carried on carpets used as stretchers on the route, which leads over a makeshift bridge and then a single path secured by the army and volunteers.

Desperate people abandoned pushchairs and heavy suitcases to make sure they could get on the buses out of the war zone.

"We had no light at home, no light, no water, we just sat in the basement," Inna Scherbanyova, 54, an economist from Irpin, told AFP.

"Explosions were constantly going off... Near our house there are cars, there were dead people in one of them... very scary."

A day earlier a family of two adults and two children were killed by a shell as they tried to leave the war-torn area.

"They are monsters. Irpin is at war, Irpin has not surrendered," mayor Oleksandr Markushyn said on Telegram, adding that he had seen the family killed with his own eyes.

Two recent attempts to allow some 200,000 civilians to leave the besieged Azov Sea port of Mariupol have also ended in disaster.

Refugees trying to escape Mariupol using humanitarian corridors were left stranded as the road they were directed towards was mined, the ICRC said on Monday. 

- 'Secure the skies' -

There was no let-up in the violence overnight into Monday, as outgunned Ukrainian forces, helped with military supplies from western countries, try to hold back Russian forces.

Air sirens sounded in cities across the country, and there was intense aerial bombardment in Ukraine's second city Kharkiv, which has endured almost non-stop fire in recent days.

"The enemy continues the offensive operation against Ukraine, focusing on the encirclement of Kyiv, Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Sumy and Mykolayiv," the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said in a statement.

The mayor of Gostomel, the town north of Kiev that is home to a crucial military airfield, was shot dead by Russian forces along with two other people while "distributing bread to the hungry and medicine to the sick," local officials said.

Nine bodies -- five civilians and four soldiers -- were found in the rubble of Vinnytsia airport in central Ukraine after it was destroyed in a Russian missile attack on Sunday, rescue services said.

Fears meanwhile rose that main port of Odessa, dubbed the "pearl of the Black Sea", was the next target of Russia's offensive in the south. Officials said Russia had shelled the village of Tuzly in the Odessa region from the sea, causing no injuries.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky renewed calls for the West to boycott Russian exports, particularly oil, and to impose a no-fly zone to stop the carnage.

"How many more deaths and losses must it take to secure the skies over Ukraine?" he said in a video message.

Twelve days of fighting have killed hundreds of civilians and wounded thousands. An unending stream of people -- mostly women and children -- has poured into neighbouring countries, especially Poland.

Western allies have imposed unprecedented sanctions against businesses, banks and billionaires in a bid to choke the Russian economy and pressure Moscow to halt its assault.

Macron warned the situation in Ukraine was worsening by the day and international attempts to agree on a ceasefire had so far failed.

He said a top priority was to avoid "catastrophes" with Ukraine's nuclear power plants after Europe's largest atomic power plant Zaporizhzhia was attacked and seized by invading Russian forces last week.

There are four active nuclear plants in the country as well as the Chernobyl facility that was the site of the 1986 nuclear disaster.

But Macron also insisted that "France is not at war with Russia", adding that "what we want is to stop this war without becoming belligerents ourselves".

Macron spoke to Putin on Sunday for one hour and 45 minutes, the fourth time they had spoken since the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24.

Russia would reach its objectives in Ukraine "either through negotiation or through war", Putin told Macron according to a French presidential official, adding the Russian president also pledged "it was not his intention" to attack Ukrainian nuclear sites.

 Jacaranda News