A new attempt to evacuate the many civilians stranded in the besieged city of Mariupol was underway on Thursday while a meeting between Russian and Ukrainian foreign ministers is planned soon, according to Turkey.
The Ukrainian government plans to send 45 buses to evacuate civilians, as Russia has declared itself “ready to open access to humanitarian convoys from Mariupol”, in the direction of the city of Zaporozhye, according to Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk.
Seventeen buses have already left for Mariupol from Zaporozhye, some 220 km to the northwest, she said.
Mariupol, a strategic port on the Sea of Azov, has been besieged and shelled by Russian forces since late February. People who managed to leave the city and NGOs described terrible conditions there, with civilians holed up in cellars deprived of water, food and communication, and corpses littering the streets. Some 160,000 civilians are still believed to be stranded there.
The announcement comes after Russia’s Defense Ministry announced a “silence regime” Wednesday night, or local ceasefire, starting at 3 a.m. EDT in Mariupol.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Cavusoglu also announced Thursday morning that a meeting between his Russian counterparts, Sergei Lavrov, and Ukrainian, Dmytro Kouleba, could take place “within one or two weeks”.
It remains at this stage “impossible to advance a date” or a place, he added in a television interview.
Donor conference
According to the British Ministry of Defence, “intense fighting continues in Mariupol, a key objective for Russian forces, but the Ukrainians retain control of the city center”.
Russian military activity around the northern city of Cherniguiv is also not weakening despite recent Russian announcements, the ministry noted Thursday morning on its Twitter account.
Russia had promised Tuesday to “radically” reduce its military activity in the direction of kyiv and Cherniguiv, after Russian-Ukrainian talks in Istanbul, before seeming to reconsider these announcements.
“Russian forces still hold positions east and west of kyiv despite the withdrawal of a limited number of units. Intense fighting is likely to unfold in the city’s suburbs in the coming days,” the UK ministry warns.
The United Kingdom is hosting a donors’ conference on Thursday to mobilize more lethal weapons for Ukraine, the British Ministry of Defense said on Tuesday.
According to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), Ukraine’s economy is expected to contract by 20% this year due to Russia’s invasion of the country, which will see its GDP plummet by 10%.
In Kharkiv, a large city near the Russian border, numerous bombings took place during the first part of the night, AFP noted. Several missiles were fired overnight, according to a source in the 92nd Brigade, one of the units defending the city.
The Russians “are not aiming at any military objective, last night it was only artillery bombardments of all kinds on residential areas”, commented this source. No report was immediately available.
“Troop buildup”
Late in the night from Wednesday to Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he had no faith in Russia’s promises to reduce its military force in the direction of kyiv and indicated that his army was preparing for new fighting in the East. from Ukraine.
“We don’t believe anyone, not a single nice phrase,” Mr. Zelensky said in a video address to the nation. “We also see that there is an accumulation of Russian troops for new strikes” in the Donbass region (east) “and we are preparing for it”, he insisted.
“We will not give anything. We will fight for every meter of our territory,” he said.
In the short term, “it is expected that the fire on the Ukrainian units will intensify”, with the line of sight “the mission to besiege the city of Cherniguiv”, noted the staff of the Ukrainian army late Wednesday evening in its briefing posted on Facebook.
An adviser to the Ukrainian Minister of the Interior, Vadym Denysenko, also indicated that “the Russians have started to use Brest airport (located in Belarus, a neighboring country to the north of Ukraine, an ally of Moscow, editor’s note ) to bombard our territories”.
“The war continues. For the moment, to my knowledge, there is no breakthrough or novelty, ”also declared the head of French diplomacy, Jean-Yves Le Drian, on Wednesday evening.
“Negotiations with the Russian delegation will resume online on April 1,” Ukrainian chief negotiator David Arakhamia said on television on Wednesday.
Putin “misinformed”
As clashes continue on the ground, US and British intelligence described Wednesday and Thursday a Russian president “misinformed” about the conflict, cold with his staff and surrounded by advisers afraid to tell him the truth. .
“We have information that Putin believes the Russian military misled him, which has caused ongoing tension between him and his staff,” the US executive’s communications director said on Wednesday. , Kate Bedingfield, during a routine briefing.
“We think Putin is misinformed […] about the poor performance of the Russian army and the severity of the impact of the sanctions on the Russian economy because its senior advisers are afraid to tell it the truth,” she said.
And Jeremy Fleming, director of the British cybersecurity agency (GCHQ), adds: the Russian president “extremely misjudged” the invasion of Ukraine. His advisers “are afraid to tell him the truth” about his “failing” war strategy in Ukraine, he said Thursday in a speech at the Australian National University in Canberra.
In five weeks of war, more than four million Ukrainians have been forced to flee their country, announced the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (HCR) in Geneva. Europe had not seen such waves of refugees since the Second World War.
In total, more than ten million people, more than a quarter of the population, had to leave their homes.