Talks between kyiv and Moscow resumed on Friday 1 April. “Our positions on Crimea and Donbass have not changed”, warned the Russian negotiator on his Telegram channel. For his part, the head of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, announced that the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, the Briton Martin Griffiths, will be in Moscow on Sunday to try to obtain a “humanitarian ceasefire” in Ukraine. He must then go to kyiv, he said. On the ground, fighting and strikes continue while access to Mariupol, a devastated port city in the south of the country, remains difficult or even impossible. Franceinfo summarizes the highlights of the day.
“Impossible” to carry out the evacuation of Mariupol on Friday, according to the Red Cross
The Red Cross assures that it was not able to access Mariupol, a port city in southern Ukraine, to evacuate civilians, as planned. “The ICRC team, which includes three vehicles and nine people, did not reach Mariupol and could not facilitate the safe passage of civilians today”the International Committee of the Red Cross said in a statement. “They will try again on Saturday to facilitate the safe passage of civilians from Mariupol”a port city devastated by Russian bombing and fighting, added the Red Cross.
However, a column of buses carrying displaced people, including residents of Mariupol, arrived Friday evening in Zaparojia, a Ukrainian city controlled by the kyiv army, AFP noted. The buses were carrying residents of Mariupol who had managed to reach the city of Berdiansk, occupied by Russian forces, where they had been picked up by the convoy, according to testimonies of arrivals to AFP and official officials.
The Ukrainian president welcomes the visit to Kyiv of the President of the European Parliament
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said his “acknowledgement” to Roberta Metsola, the Maltese President of the European Parliament, for coming “heroically” and “personally” in Kyiv. Roberta Metsola, elected President of the European Parliament on January 18, is the first leader of a European institution to visit the Ukrainian capital since the start of the Russian invasion on February 24.
Volodymyr Zelensky thanked Roberta Metsola for the European Parliament’s support for Ukraine welcoming him to the Ukrainian capital, according to a video posted by the Ukrainian presidency. “We greatly appreciate all these steps. And as we now see everything through the prism friend / no friend, (…) that the gray area no longer exists for us in diplomacy (…) we are happy that you be on the side of light and good concerning Ukraine”did he declare.
Chernobyl plant intact but Russian soldiers exposed to radiation, kyiv says
“All equipment at the Chernobyl power plant is working. All radiation control and monitoring systems are operating in their usual regime”said the director of the plant Valery Seïda, quoted in a statement from the Ukrainian agency for atomic energy Energoatom. “The control unit is operating normally”both concerning the sarcophagus which covers damaged reactor n°4, and the storage of radioactive material.
But, in this forbidden zone heavily contaminated by the 1986 disaster, the Russian soldiers were mainly exposed to probably large doses of radiation, note the Ukrainians. “The thick dust that their vehicles blew into the air and the radioactive particles it contains could have easily entered the Russians’ bodies through their lungs”advance Valery Seida. Worse, they seem to have dug trenches in the “red forest”the most contaminated area.
Russia accuses Ukraine of carrying out a helicopter strike on its soil
The strike in Russia, the first of its kind if confirmed to be the work of the Ukrainian Air Force, comes as Russia has repeatedly claimed to have full control of the air in Ukraine. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov immediately warned that this event was not going “to create the appropriate conditions for the continuation of negotiations”.
According to the governor of the Belgorod region, Vyacheslav Gladkov, Ukrainian helicopters hit a fuel depot in the city of the same name, about forty kilometers from the Ukrainian border. For its part, the government refused to confirm, but did not deny.