The situation in the strategic port of Mariupol is “inhuman”, the Ukrainian president said on Saturday evening, calling on the West to “immediately” provide the heavy weapons he has been demanding for several weeks, while Russia claims to control almost all of the city and launches a new appeal to its last defenders to lay down their arms.
• Read also: Another Russian general killed in Ukraine
• Read also: [EN DIRECT] 52 days of war in Ukraine: here are the latest developments
• Read also: Ukraine: territorial defense, the last bastion against the Russians
“The situation in Mariupol remains as serious as it can get. Simply inhuman,” Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video message. “This is what the Russian Federation did deliberately. (…) Russia is deliberately trying to destroy anyone in Mariupol’, in south-eastern Ukraine.
According to him, there are only “two options”: “Either the partners provide Ukraine with all the necessary heavy weapons, the planes and, without any exaggeration, immediately” to “reduce the pressure on Mariupol and lift the siege”. of this city inhabited by 441,000 people before the invasion on February 24.
“Either — the path of negotiation, in which the role of partners should also be decisive,” the Ukrainian president continued, saying that the search for a “military or diplomatic” solution had been a “daily” activity from the start. of the blockade but proved “extremely difficult”.
Remarks published when the Russian Ministry of Defense asked the last Ukrainian fighters entrenched in the Azovstal metallurgical complex to cease fighting on Sunday at 6 a.m. Moscow time (0300 GMT), and to evacuate the premises before 1300 (1000 GMT).
“All those who have given up their arms will be guaranteed to have their lives saved,” the ministry assured on Telegram. “It’s their only chance.”
Apart from this pocket of resistance, “the entire territory of the city of Mariupol has been cleared of militants from the Nazi Azov formation, foreign mercenaries and Ukrainian soldiers”, he said.
Hungry Mariupol
Earlier, the Ukrainian president had threatened to halt peace talks with Moscow if the last Ukrainian soldiers in Mariupol were “eliminated”.
“There is no food, no water, no medicine,” he got carried away with the media, accusing the Russians of “refusing” the establishment of humanitarian corridors.
According to the executive director of the World Food Program David Beasley, more than 100,000 civilians are on the brink of starvation in Mariupol, also lacking water and a source of heating.
In terms of human toll, “Marioupol, it can be ten times Borodianka”, a locality located not far from kyiv destroyed after being pounded and the scene of alleged abuses during its occupation, hammered the Ukrainian president.
The Russian army again aimed its missiles at kyiv, which had enjoyed a bit of a break lately. Motivated by revenge after the loss of her flagship in the Black Sea, the cruiser Moskva.
The Ukrainians claim to have caused its sinking thanks to their Neptune anti-ship missiles. The Pentagon agreed, stating that the Russian ship had been hit by two Ukrainian missiles on Thursday.
A version that the Russian authorities have not officially endorsed, simply evoking a fire that caused the explosion of ammunition on board the building which sank a few hours later during its tow.
“We are perfectly aware that we will not be forgiven” for the destruction of the Moskva and therefore this blow to Russia’s “imperial ambitions”, the spokeswoman for the military command of southern Ukraine, Natalia Goumenyuk, predicted on Friday. .
“The number and scale of missile strikes on Kyiv sites will increase in response to all terrorist-type attacks and sabotage carried out on Russian territory by the nationalist regime in Kyiv,” warned the same day. Russian army.
Russian reprisals
It didn’t take long: a Russian strike on Friday hit a complex in the kyiv region producing Neptune missiles.
And on Saturday one person was killed and “several” had to be hospitalized following a strike against an industrial complex in the Darnytsky district, on the outskirts of kyiv, which notably manufactures tanks, announced the mayor of the capital. Vitali Klitschko.
A large number of soldiers and police were present after the attack, preventing access to these facilities, from which smoke was billowing, said an AFP journalist.
Russia for its part claimed that “production buildings of an arms factory in kyiv” had been destroyed.
kyiv and its surroundings had been relatively spared from the bombardments since the withdrawal of the Russian army from this area at the end of March, but the loss of the Moskva sparked the ire of Moscow.
Faced with this situation, the mayor of the capital once again called on his fellow citizens who had fled the fighting not to return to kyiv, whose population nevertheless massively took advantage of the first radiant day of spring on Friday to take a walk or take a glass on the terrace.
“This is the first time that we have returned to the city center, we wanted (…) to take in the crowds. Seeing all these people makes me feel so good,” said Nataliya Makrieva, a 43-year-old veterinarian.
Russian forces also shelled an oil refinery in eastern Ukraine on Saturday, four kilometers from Lysychansk, very close to the front line, local authorities said.
From the road along the site, AFP journalists were able to see tanks still on fire at the end of the afternoon and a long plume of black smoke pushed by the wind.
Need weapons
Ukraine also claimed to have destroyed four cruise missiles fired by Russian planes that took off from neighboring Belarus on the Lviv region in the west on Saturday morning.
In the southern Ukrainian region of Odessa, “Russian anti-aircraft defense shot down a Ukrainian military transport plane, delivering a large batch of weapons supplied to Ukraine by Western countries”, for its part affirmed on Saturday the Russian Defense Ministry.
Volodymyr Zelensky again called on the world on Saturday to “prepare” for Russia’s possible use of its nuclear weapons. “We need medicine (against radiation), air-raid shelters,” he said.
According to him, around 2,500 to 3,000 Ukrainian soldiers have died and around 10,000 have been injured since the start of the war.
During a telephone exchange with the Chief of the American Armed Forces Mark Milley, his Ukrainian counterpart Valery Zaluzhny insisted – echoing Mr. Zelensky’s appeals – on the urgent need for arms and ammunition.
But, according to the Washington Post, Russia sent an official complaint to the United States this week, warning the American government of “unforeseeable consequences” if its military assistance to Ukraine continues to increase.
As for British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and several other senior officials, Russia said on Saturday they were banned from entering its soil, in retaliation for British sanctions on Moscow over its military operation in Ukraine.
Nearly five million people have fled Ukraine since February 24, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said, adding that 40,200 more people had left their country in the past 24 hours.