About 100,000 people are still trapped under Russian bombs in besieged Mariupol, and Ukraine has again urged the West to provide it with offensive weapons, on the eve of an extraordinary NATO summit in Brussels.
Almost a month after the start of the Russian invasion, Moscow on Wednesday accused the United States of obstructing “difficult” Russian-Ukrainian talks. Russia on Monday ignored Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s proposal to meet his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to reach “compromises”, including on the occupied territories of Crimea (south) and Donbass (east).
Pending a possible breakthrough in the negotiations, “nearly 100,000 people in inhuman conditions” are still trapped in the ruins of the large city of Mariupol (south), “under total siege, without food, without water, without drugs, under constant bombardment,” Zelensky warned in a video released early Wednesday.
The Ukrainian president continues to appeal to the parliaments of the Western camp, before a weekend of high diplomatic activity: Thursday, a month to the day after the outbreak of the Russian invasion, Westerners will meet in Brussels for summits of the NATO, the G7 and the European Union.
The key, “new sanctions against Russia”, according to Jake Sullivan, national security adviser to US President Joe Biden.
The chief of staff of the Ukrainian presidency on Wednesday called on Westerners to deliver “offensive weapons”, a “means of deterrence” against Moscow, on the eve of the NATO summit to which Volodymyr Zelensky will address by videoconference.
Joe Biden, who leaves for Europe on Wednesday, will also “work with the allies on long-term adjustments” concerning NATO’s presence in Eastern Europe, said Mr. Sullivan. After attending the three summits, he will travel to Poland on Friday, the country which hosts the majority of the 3.5 million Ukrainian refugees.
Exclude Russia from the G20?
Will Russia be excluded from certain international institutions? “On the issue of the G20, I would simply say this: we believe that Russia cannot act as if nothing has happened in international institutions and in the international community,” Sullivan said.
China spoke out on Wednesday against excluding Russia from the next summit of this vast group of industrialized and emerging countries.
Mariupol, a predominantly Russian-speaking port city strategically located between Crimea (south), occupied by Moscow since 2014, and the separatist territory of Donetsk (east), has been bombed for weeks by the Russians. She was targeted Tuesday by two “superpowered bombs”, according to the municipality, which did not give a report.
Satellite images taken Tuesday morning by the American company Maxar and distributed to AFP showed the devastation of residential areas, civil infrastructure and factories.
Russian tanks rolled into the city, and a senior Pentagon official said Tuesday evening that Russian strategy now relied on “long-range fire in the city center.”
Residents who fled Mariupol described to the NGO Human Rights Watch “a freezing hell, with streets strewn with corpses and rubble of destroyed buildings”. According to the city council on Telegram, in total almost 45,000 residents of this city were able to be evacuated.
“It’s not war, it’s genocide,” Ukraine’s Attorney General Iryna Venediktova told AFP on Tuesday, because “theaters of war have rules, principles. What we see in Mariupol (is) the complete absence of rules”.
President Zelensky on Tuesday evening denounced the capture by the Russians of a humanitarian convoy. For the supply of food and medicine, “all our attempts, unfortunately, are reduced to nothing by the Russian occupiers. With shelling or obvious terror,” he lamented.
The president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Peter Maurer, arrived in Moscow on Wednesday to “continue humanitarian discussions with the Russian authorities”, the Red Cross said in a statement.
At least 121 children have been killed and 167 others injured in Ukraine since the start of the Russian invasion, according to the Ukrainian General Prosecutor’s Office.
The offensive is “bogged down”
The Russian offensive “is bogged down despite all the destruction it causes day after day,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Wednesday.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres spoke out on Tuesday against an “absurd” and “unwinnable” war, and said that “even if Mariupol fell, Ukraine could not be conquered city by city, street by street, house by house.” »
Addressing the Japanese parliament on Wednesday, the Ukrainian president, however, denounced the functioning of the UN, which was unable to prevent the invasion, and called for profound reforms of this institution.
Russian forces continued at the beginning of the week to bombard other Ukrainian cities: kyiv, Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, Cherniguiv…
In kyiv, where the curfew introduced on Monday evening ended on Wednesday morning, at least four people were injured in Russian shelling in the western districts of Shevchenkivsky and Sviatoshynsky, the town hall said on Wednesday. of the capital. The shelling hit a shopping center, houses and residential buildings.
The population remaining in town awaits, anxious but determined, a possible assault by Russian troops. In the west, north and east of the capital, not a street corner, an alley or a crossroads which is not cut by a wall of sandbags or anti-tank obstacles.
After the strike Sunday evening of a Russian missile on an ultramodern shopping center in kyiv, where according to Moscow were camouflaged ammunition and artillery, the fear concerns spy drones or suicide bombers, like photos on social networks which could reveal Ukrainian positions.
The bombardments were particularly intense on Tuesday in several localities around the capital, and fighting was taking place in particular in Irpin and Gostomel, according to the governor of the region, Oleksandre Pavliuk.
Counteroffensive
In southern Ukraine, where Kherson, the only major Ukrainian city they control, is located, Russian forces attempt to advance west and the Black Sea but make no progress around Mykolaiv.
Kharkiv (northeast), the country’s second city, is surrounded by Russian forces on several sides and major axes, but is not surrounded. It was bombed 32 times on Tuesday, according to regional governor Oleg Synegoubov.
The Ukrainians “are now, in certain situations, on the offensive,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told CNN, saying they are pushing the Russians “out of areas where (they) have been in the past.” .
The latter are experiencing problems with logistics, supplies, coordination, command and communication, he later listed during a press briefing, “so there are a lot of things they don’t have. not successful”.
The Americans thus suggest the occurrence of a tipping point in the conflict. A senior Pentagon official said Tuesday evening that, “for the first time”, the Russians had gone “a little below 90% of their available combat power” massed in Belarus and on the Russian-Ukrainian border.
However, the New York Times, relying on Pentagon sources, explains that the loss of 10% of an army’s military personnel (dead or wounded) greatly hampers its ability to fight.
According to Washington, Russia has amplified its air and naval operations in the country in recent days in the face of resistance from Ukrainian forces.
“What we see is a desperate attempt by the Russians to regain momentum,” noted a senior Pentagon official earlier this week.
Americans, who worried about possible military and economic support from China to Russia, “have not seen” military supplies from Beijing to Moscow since a call between Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping on Friday last, noted Jake Sullivan on Tuesday evening.