Russians shelled civilian infrastructure(water supply, power plant), and shoot everyone who was trying to fix it, they didn't let in humanitarian convoy. They shelled evacuation meeting point. Twice. And placed landmines on evacuation route. They resorted to similar tactics in previous conflicts.

And if you look at how Russians have been behaving themselves ever since this war has started, then you will realize that Azov don't need civilians as a human shield since Russians are willingly shelling and bombing civilians, and have been doing it ever since this war started. Human shield won't stop Russians.

That's the Russian propaganda. The Ukrainian propaganda says the Russians are the ones preventing people from leaving.

Using civilians as shield makes more sense for defenders, not for attackers. Civilians makes harder to shell and bomb places. The exception is if attackers force civilians to march in front of their troops, which is not the case apparently.

Russia mined the path they themselves had designated as a humanitarian corridor before. To target civilians. This is reported from Mariupol.

Please, don't come with conjectures about Ukrainians using civilians as a meat shield, this is either utterly bollocks or you need a pretty convincing source for that statement.

>Civilians makes harder to shell and bomb places

Not if you're Russian.

The (reports are that) Russians are using civilians for target practise and hostages, not human shields.

Reports? There's video all over the internet. Yesterday I saw a video of a solitary civilian car being lit up by machine gun fire before taking a couple shells. I'm told there were accompanying photos of a dead couple in their 80s, which I didn't look at because I want to sleep at night.