War in Ukraine | Shelling near Lviv airport

(Lviv) The area around Lviv airport in western Ukraine was hit by Russian ‘missiles’ on Friday morning, according to the city’s mayor, as US President Joe Biden prepared to warn his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping against any temptation to support Moscow.

“Missiles hit the Lviv airport district,” wrote Andriy Sadovy, the mayor of this large city near the Polish border, on his Facebook account, assuring that the strike did not directly hit airport facilities. but an aircraft repair plant.

“The operation of the factory had been suspended before, so there are no casualties for now,” he said.

An AFP reporter saw a plume of smoke billowing into the air above the area, along with police vehicles and ambulances racing in that direction.

The city of Lviv had been spared the fighting so far. But the Russian army bombarded a Ukrainian military base in this region on Sunday, killing at least 30 people.

In Mariupol, a besieged strategic Ukrainian port in the southeast of the country, the Russian army and its separatist allies are now fighting in the city center, the Russian Defense Ministry announced on Friday.

“Units of the People’s Republic [autoproclamée, NDLR] of Donetsk, with the support of the Russian armed forces, tighten their grip of encirclement and fight the nationalists in the center of the city”, indicated the spokesman of the ministry, Igor Konashenkov.

He also assured that the Russian forces and the separatists of Luhansk now control 90% of this territory which is part with Donetsk of the Donbass region and whose independence Moscow has recognized.

Taking Mariupol would be an important turning point in the conflict and would allow Russia to ensure territorial continuity between its forces coming from annexed Crimea and the troops from Donbass.

Putin accuses Ukraine of ‘dragging’ talks

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday accused Ukraine of “dragging” talks on the conflict and said Kyiv had “unrealistic” demands, during a telephone interview with the German Chancellor.

“It has been noted that the Kyiv regime is trying by all means to drag out the negotiation process, putting forward new unrealistic proposals,” the Kremlin said in a statement summarizing Putin’s remarks to Olaf Scholz.

Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for the Russian presidency, told the press that the meeting between the two leaders had been a “tough conversation”.

Russia has indicated that it wants to negotiate with Kyiv a neutral and demilitarized status.

The Ukrainian authorities, without brushing aside the idea of ​​neutrality and seeming to renounce NATO membership, have called for the designation of countries to guarantee its security and which would defend it militarily in the event of aggression by Moscow. .

Kyiv also demands the withdrawal of all Russian forces and respect for its territorial integrity, while Russia has recognized the independence of two separatist entities in Ukraine and has annexed Crimea.

As the fighting continues, Joe Biden and Xi Jinping have planned to discuss Moscow’s war in Ukraine at 11 a.m. Friday. And the tone was set on Thursday by Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

“President Biden […] will make it clear to him that China will bear responsibility for any act aimed at supporting Russian aggression and that we will not hesitate to impose costs on it,” Blinken said.

“We see with concern that China is considering giving Russia direct military assistance,” he added.

Since the beginning of the Russian invasion on February 24, the Chinese communist regime, prioritizing its relationship with Moscow and sharing with Russia a deep hostility towards the United States, has refrained from urging Russian President Vladimir Putin to withdraw his troops from Ukraine.

But China may have already begun to distance itself from Moscow because, according to diplomats at the UN, Russia on Thursday night gave up on holding a Security Council vote the next day on a war-related resolution. in Ukraine, for lack of support from its closest allies.

“Bloody Dictator”

And Mr. Biden didn’t mince his words about Mr. Putin, calling him a “thug” and a “bloodthirsty dictator” after calling him a “war criminal” the day before.

The perpetrators of war crimes in Ukraine will be “accountable” to international justice, for their part warned the G7 foreign ministers in a joint statement.

“Intentionally targeting civilians is a war crime. After so much destruction in the past three weeks, I find it difficult to conclude that the Russians are doing anything other than that,” Blinken said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky implored Westerners on Thursday to help “stop this war” as a Russian strike killed at least 27 people in the east of the country.

For him, “a people is being destroyed in Europe”. “Help us stop this war!” “, he added, applauded by the deputies of the German Bundestag to whom he addressed Thursday by videoconference.

Volodymyr Zelensky also accused the Russian air force on Wednesday of having “knowingly” bombed a theater in Mariupol where hundreds of inhabitants were refugees.

“The world must finally admit that Russia has become a terrorist state,” he added.

According to the Mariupol town hall, “more than a thousand” people were in an air-raid shelter under the theater when it was bombed. No results have been communicated at this stage.

Ukrainian human rights envoy Lyudmyla Denisova said the shelter had withstood the shelling: “We think everyone survived,” she said on television.

survivors of the theater

Russia claimed not to have bombed the city, and claimed that the building had been destroyed by the Ukrainian nationalist Azov battalion.

According to the Italian Minister of Culture, Rome is “willing to rebuild the theater”. “Theaters in all countries belong to all mankind,” he tweeted.

The town hall of Mariupol reported that the situation was “critical” with “uninterrupted” Russian bombardments and “colossal” destruction.

According to initial estimates, around 80% of the city’s housing stock was destroyed.

“They fire so many rockets, there are a lot of bodies of dead civilians in the streets,” Tamara Kavounenko, 58, told AFP.

Bombardments also continue in Kyiv and Kharkiv, the country’s second largest city, where at least 500 people have been killed since the start of the war.

The capital slowly came back to life on Thursday after the lifting of a curfew imposed since Tuesday evening. It has been emptied of at least half of its 3.5 million inhabitants.

no respite

No overall assessment was provided even if President Zelensky mentioned on March 12 the death of “about 1300” Ukrainian soldiers, while Moscow only reported nearly 500 dead in its ranks on March 2.

One hundred and eight children have been killed and 120 injured in the country since the Russian invasion, the Ukrainian General Prosecutor’s Office said on Thursday.

Three weeks after the start of the invasion, Moscow gives no sign of respite in its offensive despite the continuation of talks between the belligerents.

But Mr. Blinken considered that Russia had not so far demonstrated “significant effort” in its dealings with Kyiv to try to find a way out of the crisis.

“On the one hand, we salute Ukraine for remaining at the negotiating table while it is under bombardment, and on the other hand, I have not seen any significant effort from Russia to put an end through diplomacy to the war it is waging,” he said.

More than three million Ukrainians have taken the road to exile, the vast majority to Poland, sometimes only a stopover before continuing their exodus.

Vladimir Putin hammered Wednesday in a speech that the offensive was “a success”.

However, the British Ministry of Defense said on Twitter on Friday that the “logistical problems” in supplying the troops with food and fuel as well as the strong Ukrainian resistance “considerably limit Russia’s offensive potential” on the ground.