KYIV | On the 27th day of the conflict in Ukraine, the authorities announced on Tuesday a new effort to try to evacuate civilians stuck in Mariupol, a large port city in the south ravaged by Russian bombardments, while the inhabitants of Kyiv, under curfew, were holed up in their homes.
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During the night, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for the first time said he was open to “trying to discuss everything that upsets and displeases Russia” with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to “stop the war”, if he accepts to negotiate directly with him.
On the ground, the bombardments of the Russian army continued at the beginning of the week on a number of Ukrainian cities: kyiv, Kharkiv, Mariupol, Odessa, Mykolaiv…
Faced with heavy casualties and a fierce defense, the Russian military “strengthened its presence in Ukrainian airspace” on Monday, the Ukrainian military said on Facebook on Tuesday. “In addition to the use of drones, the enemy uses bombers, attack and combat aircraft, ballistic and cruise missiles.”
American intelligence sources quoted by the American daily New York Times advance more than 7,000 Russians killed since the beginning of the war.
“A Freezing Hell”
“Today (Tuesday) we are concentrating on the evacuation of the inhabitants of Mariupol”, where the humanitarian situation is dire, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said in a video.
Residents who fled the ravaged city described to the NGO Human Rights Watch “a freezing hell, with streets strewn with corpses and the rubble of destroyed buildings”, and “thousands of people cut off from the world in a besieged city” , holed up in basements without water, food, electricity or communications.
The UN also described an “extremely serious” situation, with “a critical and life-threatening shortage of food, water and medicine”.
Three humanitarian corridors were to be opened on Tuesday between three localities near Mariupol and the city of Zaporozhye, 250 km to the northeast, according to Ms Vereshchouk. “There will not be enough room for everyone” on Tuesday, but “we will continue the evacuation according to the same algorithm until we have taken out all the inhabitants of Mariupol”, she said. added.
More than 200,000 people are still in the city, according to Petro Andryushchenko, deputy mayor quoted by Human Rights Watch. According to him, more than 3,000 civilians have died there since the fighting began, but the exact toll remains unknown.
Predominantly Russian-speaking, Mariupol, strategically located between Crimea (south) and the separatist territory of Donetsk (east), has been bombarded for weeks by the Russians. The Ukrainian government has rejected an ultimatum from Moscow demanding the surrender of the city, where Russian tanks have entered and fighting continues.
The European Union on Monday qualified the “indiscriminate bombardments” on the city, which “kill everyone”, a “major war crime” and decided to double its financial support for the purchase of armaments sent to Kyiv.
The Ukrainian president accused Russia of “simply destroying” Mariupol. “They reduce it to ashes, but we will survive them,” he assured Monday evening.
In Kyiv, hit Sunday evening by a powerful Russian strike – the most powerful so far, according to residents and rescuers – which destroyed a shopping center, killing eight people, and shook the entire capital, a new curfew came into effect Monday evening until Wednesday 07:00 (05:00 GMT).
According to Moscow, the Retroville shopping center was “inoperative” and served as an arms depot. AFP saw, under their plastic shroud, six corpses dressed in military effects.
Since the beginning of the conflict on February 24, “65 inhabitants (…), including four children, have died” and around 300 people, including 16 children, have been injured in “the shelling by the Russian military”, according to Mayor Vitali Klitschko.
An American think-tank, the Institute for the study of war (ISW), has warned that the Russians are “preparing to deploy more” artillery around the capital, which they have still failed to encircle, “repelled by fierce Ukrainian resistance”.
Across the country, at least 117 children have been killed since the start of the Russian invasion, Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office said on Tuesday. 548 schools were damaged, including 72 completely destroyed, according to the same source.
Russian defections
In the Northeast, the Ukrainian army general staff said on Tuesday that nearly 300 Russian soldiers had defected near Okhtyrka, in the Sumy region, assuring that the Russian troops had only three days of ammunition, food and fuel.
In Donbass (east), plagued by a pro-Russian separatist movement since 2014, at least 124 civilians have been killed in the Lugansk region since the start of the invasion, the regional administration said on Facebook.
The Russian Ministry of Defense reported on Tuesday the capture of ten villages in Donbass by pro-Russian separatists.
The town of Avdiivka, near Donetsk, was the target of a Russian attack on Monday evening, killing at least five people and injuring 19, said Tuesday Lioudmila Denisova, in charge of human rights at the Ukrainian Parliament.
In an interview with several media, the Ukrainian president said he was ready to discuss Crimea and Donbass, while warning that Ukraine would be “destroyed” before surrendering.
But on Tuesday morning, the Kremlin judged that the ongoing talks were not “substantial” enough. “A certain process (of negotiations) is taking place, but we would like it to be more energetic, more substantial,” Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for the Russian presidency, told reporters.
“The issue of Crimea and Donbass is a very difficult story for everyone,” Zelensky said in his interview. We need “security guarantees” and an end to hostilities, and “once this blockade is lifted, let’s talk”, he said about the peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014 and the region of Eastern Ukraine.
The Ukrainian president said he wanted to speak directly to his Russian counterpart. While warning: “We must do everything so that Donbass and Crimea come back to us (…) A question of time? Yes. But the end of the war, now, that is the question”.
Nearly 3.5 million people – mostly women and children – have fled Ukraine since February 24, according to the UN.
Several sessions of negotiations between kyiv and Moscow have taken place face-to-face and by videoconference since the outbreak of the war, without result for the time being.
Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov admitted that “the situation is very difficult” in the face of “a numerically very superior enemy and the threat of a ground invasion by the army” of Belarus, an ally of Moscow.
Will chemical and biological weapons be used by the Russians? Moscow has suggested that Ukraine has them, which is “a clear sign that he (Vladimir Putin) is considering using these two types of weapons,” said US President Joe Biden on Monday evening, saying his counterpart Russian was “back to the wall”.
Moscow earlier said Joe Biden had brought Russian-US relations “to the brink” with his “unworthy” statements targeting Vladimir Putin, whom he called a “war criminal”. The American ambassador was summoned on Monday.
The weekend will be marked by intense diplomatic activity. Mr. Biden will participate Thursday in Brussels in an extraordinary NATO summit, a G7 meeting and an EU summit, before staying Friday and Saturday in Poland, the main country of arrival of Ukrainian refugees.