Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Rejected Russian call to surrender troops in the besieged city of Mariupol.
Key points:
- Ukraine says there can be “no talking” about capital in Mariupol
- Russia has offered to allow evacuations, but only if the Ukrainians lay down their arms
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy led the idea of peace talks with Vladimir Putin in Jerusalem
Iryna Vereshchuk’s response came after the Russian military called on Ukrainian fighters, who are fighting Russian troops for control of the city, “lay down their arms” and warned that a “terrible humanitarian catastrophe” was imminent.
“All those who lay down their arms are guaranteed safe passage from Mariupol,” said Colonel Mikhail Mizintsev, director of the Russian National Center for Defense Management.
“It can not be talked about any capital, the withdrawal of weapons. We have already informed the Russian side about this,” Ms. Vereshchuk told the news exchange Ukraine Pravda.
Mariupol has suffered some of the heaviest bombings since Russia attacked Ukraine on 24 February.
Many of its 400,000 residents remain trapped in the city with little, if any, food, water and power.
City authorities said nearly 10 percent of the city’s population fled last week, risking their lives in convoys.
Colonel-General Mizintsev said humanitarian corridors for civilians east and west of Mariupol would be opened at 10 a.m. Moscow time on Monday.
But Ms Vereshchuk later said the two sides only agreed to evacuate people from eight other towns and cities, not Mariupol.
She said efforts to reach Mariupol with humanitarian supplies continued to fail.
Previous offers to allow residents to evacuate Mariupol and other Ukrainian cities have failed, or were only partially successful, with bombings continuing as civilians try to flee.
Russia and Ukraine have traded the blame for failing to open such corridors in recent weeks.
Colonel-General Mizintsev, without providing evidence, said that Ukrainian “bandits”, “neo-Nazis” and nationalists engaged in “mass terror” inside Mariupol and went on a murder spree in the city.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Saturday that the siege of Mariupol was “a terror that will be remembered for centuries”.
Colonel-General Mizintsev denied that Russia used heavy weapons in Mariupol.
He said Russia had evacuated 59,304 people from the city, but that 130,000 civilians had remained there as effective hostages.
He said that 330,686 people from Ukraine had been evacuated from Russia since the beginning of the “operation”.
Mariupol city council said late Saturday on its telegram channel that several thousand residents had been “deported” against their will in Russia last week.
Ukrainian politician Inna Sovsun said these citizens were taken for forced labor and far away from Russia.
“They will be forced to sign papers that they will stay in that area for two or three years and they will work for free in those areas,” she said.
Mariupol authorities said the evacuated cell phones and documents were inspected by Russian troops before being sent to “remote cities in Russia”.
Ms Vereshchuk said more than 7,000 people were evacuated from Ukrainian cities on Sunday by humanitarian corridors, more than half of them from Mariupol.
She said the government planned to send nearly 50 buses to Mariupol on Monday for further evacuations.
Steve McAndrew of the Red Cross said the organization would do anything to reach the people there.
“The last thing we heard was that there were about 350,000 people imprisoned there,” he said.
“My colleagues on the International Committee of the Red Cross work there with the Ukrainian Red Cross.
“It’s very, very difficult to access. It’s an intense situation.”
EU policy chief accuses Russia of war crimes in Mariupol
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has accused Russia of committing war crimes in Ukraine, particularly in Mariupol.
“What is happening in Mariupol is a massive war crime,” he said.
“Destroy, bomb and kill everyone in an indiscriminate manner.”
He said Russia had lost all moral climax and stressed that “war has law too”.
The International Criminal Court in the Netherlands is gathering evidence on all possible war crimes in Ukraine, but Russia, like the United States, does not recognize the tribunal’s jurisdiction.
Civilians killed as shellfish hit houses in Kyiv
The shell hit residential buildings and a shopping mall in Kyiv’s Podil district late Sunday, killing at least four people, according to local authorities.
“According to the information we have at the moment, some houses and one of the shopping centers [were hit]”, said Mayor Vitali Klitschko on his telegram channel.
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He said rescue teams were setting off a large fire in the mall while other details were confirmed.
Reuters could not immediately verify the reports on the ground.
Further east, an ammonia leak at a chemical plant in the city of Sumy contaminated an area with a radius of more than 2.5 kilometers, officials said.
Sumy Regional Governor Dmytro Zhyvytskyy later said the leak was contained but did not reveal what caused it.
The Sumykhimprom plant is located on the eastern edge of the city, which has a population of about 263,000 and has been regularly bombarded by Russian troops in recent weeks.
The UN human rights office said at least 902 civilians had been killed as of midnight Saturday, though the real toll was likely to be much higher.
Ukrainian prosecutors say 112 children were killed.
The UN refugee agency said 10 million Ukrainians had been displaced, including some 3.4 million who had fled to neighboring countries such as Poland.
Officials in the region said they were reaching out to the capacity to accommodate refugees.
The Israeli Prime Minister proposes to hold peace talks in Jerusalem
Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has offered to hold peace talks between Mr Zelenskyy and Vladimir Putin in Jerusalem.
Mr Bennett spoke after Mr Zelenskyy gave the Israeli parliament a video address.
The Israeli prime minister, who in recent weeks has acted as an intermediary between the two warring nations, said Israel “along with other friends in the world will continue to try to bridge the gap and bring an end to the war.”
“There is still a long way to go because, as I said, there are a number of controversial issues, some of them fundamental,” he said.
Mr Zelenskyy said Jerusalem was “the right place to find peace. If possible”.
Last week, Mr Bennett stepped up his efforts to bring the two sides together and spoke several times with Mr Zelenskyy and Mr Putin.
Last week, he secretly flew to Moscow to meet with the Kremlin leader.
Mr Zelenskyy, a Jew, used his daily address to the Ukrainian people to deny Russian accusations that he was running an administration that used “Nazism”.
Switching from his usual Ukrainian to Russian in his remarks, he said: “Russian propagandists have a hard job on their hands today. For the first time, a Ukrainian president spoke to the Israeli parliament and, through video recording, with the people of Israel. “a Ukrainian accused by Moscow of Nazism.”
At a conference on Monday, Mr Bennett said there had been progress in the ceasefire negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, but “very large” gaps remained between the two sides.
ABC / Drot
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