Almost 100,000 people are trapped by Russian bombardment and facing starvation in the ruins of Mariupol, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, as Moscow accused Washington of undermining peace talks.
Tens of thousands of residents have already fled the besieged southern port city, bringing harrowing testimony of a “freezing hellscape riddled with dead bodies and destroyed buildings,” Human Rights Watch said.
As the UN demanded Russia end its “absurd” and “unwinnable” war, Zelenskiy yesterday delivered a message of defiance to the Japanese and French parliaments.
Photo: AFP
Nearly a month since Russia invaded Ukraine, stop-start peace talks have agreed on daily humanitarian corridors for refugees, and Ukraine says it is willing to countenance some Russian demands subject to a national referendum.
However, it has refused to bow to Russian pressure to disarm and renounce all Western alliances, and Zelenskiy is today due to address a NATO summit in Brussels, joined by US President Joe Biden.
“The talks are tough, the Ukrainian side constantly changes its position,” Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov said yesterday.
“It’s hard to avoid the impression that our American colleagues are holding their hand,” he said, adding that Washington “apparently wants to keep us in a state of military action as long as possible.”
Russia refuses to rule out using nuclear weapons if it were facing an “existential threat,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told CNN.
For Ukrainians besieged in Mariupol and other cities, Russian talk of peace rings hollow as they come under indiscriminate shelling that Western countries say amounts to a war crime.
“Failing in their war against the Ukrainian people, the enemy is executing the total destruction of critical infrastructure,” Ukraine’s armed forces command said on Facebook.
In his latest video address, Zelenskiy said more than 7,000 people had escaped Mariupol in the past 24 hours, but one group traveling along an agreed humanitarian route west of the city were “simply captured by the occupiers.”
“Today, the city still has nearly 100,000 people in inhumane conditions. In a total siege. Without food, water, medication, under constant shelling and under constant bombing,” he said.
Satellite images of Mariupol released by private company Maxar showed a charred landscape, with several buildings ablaze and smoke billowing from the city.
Ukrainian forces also reported “heavy” ground fighting, with Russian “infantry storming the city” after they rejected a Monday ultimatum to surrender.
UN relief agencies estimate there have been about 20,000 civilian casualties in Mariupol, and perhaps 3,000 killed, but the actual figure remains unknown.
“Even if Mariupol falls, Ukraine cannot be conquered city by city, street by street, house by house,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said.
“This war is unwinnable. Sooner or later, it will have to move from the battlefield to the peace table. That is inevitable,” he said.
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