KYIV — Macron warned Sunday against a verbal “escalation”
of Russia’s invasion in Ukraine, after US President Joe Biden branded Vladimir
Putin a “butcher” who “cannot remain in power”.
اضافة اعلان
The Kremlin had reacted in fury over Biden’s
comments which it said narrows the window for bilateral relations, with
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine now into a second month.
Macron said he would speak to Putin in the next two
days to organize the evacuation of civilians from the heavily bombarded port
city of Mariupol.
The French leader told broadcaster France 3 that he
saw his task as “achieving first a ceasefire and then the total withdrawal of
(Russian) troops by diplomatic means.”
“If we want to do that, we can’t escalate either in
words or actions.”
Ukraine was making a new push to get civilians out
of the city on Sunday, with an aid route agreement for people to leave by cars
or on evacuation buses, said Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk.
Several attempts at establishing safe routes for
civilians to flee have collapsed as both sides trade blame for violating
temporary ceasefires.
Mariupol, in the region of Donetsk, has borne the
brunt of Russia’s assaults, and residents who managed to flee have recounted
harrowing scenes of death and destruction.
About 170,000 people remain trapped in the besieged
city and authorities have said they fear some 300 civilians may have died in a
Russian strike on March 17 that hit a theatre being used as a bomb shelter.
In an impassioned speech from the Royal Castle in
Warsaw, Biden blasted Putin over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,”
the US leader said, before the White House clarified that Washington was not
seeking regime change.
The Kremlin snapped back, saying “a head of state
should stay sober”.
Recapture town
Bombardments continued over
the last 24 hours in Irpin, as well as other cities around Kyiv, said Ukrainian
authorities.
Ukraine’s determined fighters continue to hold back
Russia’s far-bigger military on the frontlines, and some units are beginning to
snatch back control.
Two people were killed by shelling in the village of
Stanislav, close to the city of Kherson, where Ukrainian forces have mounted a
counter-offensive.
In an update early Sunday, the Ukrainian General
Staff said “the allied forces repulsed seven attacks” and destroyed eight tanks
in the Donetsk and Lugansk areas of the Donbas.
The Ukrainian defense ministry said its forces had
also recaptured Trostianets, a town near the Russian border that was one of the
first to fall under Moscow’s control.
Images published by the ministry showed Ukrainian
soldiers and civilians among heavily damaged buildings and what appeared to be
abandoned Russian military equipment.
Elsewhere, Russian forces took control of Slavutych,
the town where workers at the decommissioned Chernobyl nuclear plant live,
briefly detaining the mayor, Ukrainian authorities said.
Residents of the town protested, prompting the
Russians to fire shots in the air and lob stun grenades into the crowd, they
added.
‘One percent’
Biden, who was winding up a
whirlwind visit to Poland after holding a series of urgent summits in Brussels
with Western allies, met key Ukrainian cabinet ministers on Saturday.
In a possible shift on a plan to transfer Soviet-era
fighter jets from Poland to Kyiv to boost Ukraine’s firepower in the skies —
rejected last month by the Pentagon as too “high risk” — Foreign Minister
Dmytro Kuleba said the US now did not object.
“As far as we can conclude, the ball is now on the
Polish side,” Kuleba said in written comments to AFP after the meeting.
In a video address, Zelensky reiterated a call for
planes while urging allies to supply Ukraine with more weapons.
“We need more ammunition. We need it to protect not
only Ukraine but other Eastern European countries that Russia threatened to
invade,” he said.
“During the meeting ... with our American colleagues
in Poland, we made it clear again,” he said.
“What is NATO is doing? Is it being run by Russia? What are
they waiting for? It’s been 31 days. We are only asking for one percent of what
NATO has, nothing more.”
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