PRo-Russian separatists have launched an offensive in the southeastern Ukrainian port of Mariupol, according to the Defense Ministry in Moscow. The attack took place in the west of the city. A second attempt to evacuate the civilian population failed on Sunday. The city’s port continues to be besieged by the Russian army. A family who managed to leave the city for Dnipro described the conditions in Mariupol: “We stayed in the basement for seven days without heating, electricity or internet and we ran out of food and water”, said a family member who wished to remain anonymous. “On the street we saw that there were corpses everywhere, Russians and Ukrainians… We saw that people had been buried in their basements.”
Ukraine has refused to evacuate civilians via humanitarian corridors to Belarus and Russia. “This is not an acceptable option,” said Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk on Monday. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi had previously criticized the move as immoral. “People’s suffering is used to create the desired TV images,” said a written statement from President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s spokesman. “They are citizens of Ukraine, they should have the right to be evacuated to Ukrainian territory.” In the morning, Russia announced a ceasefire in Mariupol, Kyiv, Kharkiv and Sumy to set up humanitarian corridors. The Russian proposal envisages escape routes that lead to Russia or to its ally Belarus. French President Emmanuel Macron also denied the rumor that he had asked for the ceasefire. According to a report by the French television channel BFMTV, he had “not demanded humanitarian corridors” from Russia, but in a telephone call with Vladimir Putin demanded “to let the civilian population go and aid transports through”.
On Monday night, the Russian army continued its airstrikes on Ukraine’s second largest city, Kharkiv. A journalist from the AFP news agency reported that, among other things, a university sports complex and a block of flats were hit. In front of the residential building there were several bodies next to a car. Meanwhile, according to the Ukrainian general staff, Russian troops concentrated their attacks on Kharkiv in the east of the country, Sumy in the north-east and Mykolaev in the south.
The General Staff also warned that Moscow was gathering its “resources for an attack” on Kyiv. In the capital, the army stood ready to destroy the last bridge connecting the city with the western outskirts. “If we get the order from above or see that the Russians are advancing, we will blow them up,” a member of a volunteer unit told AFP. The aim was to destroy “as many enemy tanks as possible”.
Meanwhile, the American newspaper “Wall Street Journal”, citing US government circles, reported that Russia had recruited fighters experienced in urban combat from Syria. Meanwhile, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said 20,000 foreigners had come to Ukraine to join the volunteer associations.
Selenskyj warns against attack on Odessa
According to the Ukrainian regional administration, fierce fighting raged throughout Sunday around the Ukrainian capital, particularly along the road leading to Zhytomyr (150 kilometers west of Kyiv) and in Chernihiv (150 kilometers north of the capital).
In the western suburbs of Kyiv, in Irpin, “from morning to night all the neighboring buildings were hit, a tank drove into them. It was scary,” said 52-year-old local resident Tatyana Vosniuchenko on Sunday.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of planning to bomb the Black Sea port of Odessa. Russian missiles fired from the sea fell in the village of Tusly in the Odessa region on Monday, regional military spokesman Sergei Brachuk reported. According to him, the shelling was aimed at “key infrastructure sites,” but there were no casualties.
A third round of negotiations between the Russians and the Ukrainians was scheduled for Monday. However, hopes of a peaceful settlement are slim as Russian President Vladimir Putin has made it a condition that Kyiv accept all of Moscow’s demands, including Ukraine’s demilitarization and a neutral status for the country. According to the UN, hundreds of civilians have already been killed in the war. More than 1.5 million Ukrainians have fled abroad.
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