KYIV —
Ukraine warned on Monday that the humanitarian
crisis in the pulverized city of Mariupol was now “catastrophic”, as fighting
surged around Kyiv ahead of new face-to-face peace talks with Russia in Turkey.
اضافة اعلان
Russian attacks near
Kyiv cut power to more than
80,000 homes, officials said, underscoring the peril facing the capital despite
an apparent retreat in
Moscow’s war aims to focus on eastern Ukraine.
“The enemy is trying to break through the corridor
around Kyiv and block transport routes,” Ukraine’s deputy defense minister
Ganna Malyar said.
“The defense of Kyiv continues. It is very serious
today,” she said.
“It is extremely difficult for the enemy, but we
must be honest about the fact that the enemy is trying to capture Kyiv, because
to capture Kyiv is essentially a captured Ukraine, and this is their goal.”
About 20,000
Ukrainians have been killed in Russia’s
month-old invasion and 10 million have fled their homes, according to the
Ukrainian government, and several cities are still coming under withering
bombardment.
Humanitarian needs are most dire in the southern
port city of
Mariupol, where Ukraine said that about 160,000 civilians remain
encircled by Russian forces, desperate for food, water, and medicine.
Ukraine’s foreign ministry said the situation there
was “catastrophic” and Russia’s assault from land, sea and air had turned a
city once home to 450,000 people “into dust”.
Bodies unburied
Ukraine says that one
Russian strike on a theater-turned-shelter in Mariupol is feared to have killed
some 300 people.
Local lawmaker Kateryna Sukhomlynova said the
theater death toll remained unknown because of poor communications, but
witnessed terrible scenes in the city before she was able to escape west.
Unburied bodies line streets and residents cowering
in basement shelters have been forced to eat snow to stay hydrated, she told
AFP.
Ukraine decided against any humanitarian corridors
on Monday because of potential “provocations” by the
Russians along designated
routes, Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said.
France, Greece and Turkey are hoping to launch a
mass evacuation of civilians out of Mariupol within days, according to French
President Emmanuel Macron, who is seeking agreement from Russia’s Vladimir
Putin.
Macron warned that any escalation “in words or
action” could harm his evacuation efforts, after US President Joe Biden’s shock
declaration in Poland that Putin “cannot remain in power”.
Biden himself rowed back on Sunday, denying to
reporters that he had been calling for regime change, while Britain and
Germany have joined France in distancing themselves from the remark.
Peace ‘without delay’
Russia has defacto control
over the southern peninsula of Crimea that it annexed in 2014, and the
self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Lugansk in the eastern Donbas region.
In the Lugansk city of Rubizhne, one person was
killed and another wounded by overnight Russian bombardment, according to
regional Ukrainian officials.
President
Volodymyr Zelensky said the first round of
in-person talks since March 10 — due to open in Istanbul on Tuesday after
near-daily video contacts — must bring peace “without delay”.
Ukrainian “neutrality”, and the future status of
Donbas, could be in the mix for the Istanbul meeting. Ukraine’s delegation said
it had been delayed and the talks would open on Tuesday.
“We understand that it is impossible to liberate all
territory by force, that would mean
World War III, I fully understand and
realize that,” Zelensky said.
But he stressed:
“Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity are beyond doubt. Effective
security guarantees for our state are mandatory.”
Putin has called Moscow’s military goals
“demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine”, as well as the imposition of
neutral status.
Russian Foreign Minister
Sergei Lavrov named the
primary goal as “ending the killing in the Donbas region that has lasted eight
years”.
He rejected
Zelensky’s demands to meet personally with Putin, but said: “We have an
interest in these talks ending with a result that will achieve the fundamental
aims for us.”
Russia last week appeared to scale back its campaign
when senior general
Sergei Rudskoi said the first phase of the war was over and
the “main goal” was now on controlling Donbas in the east.
Western analysts say Ukraine’s unexpectedly dogged
resistance, coupled with logistical and tactical failures by the Russians,
explain any reorientation by Moscow.
The Kremlin is taking no chances with domestic
opposition to its war. A crackdown on independent reporting ensnared another
victim on Monday after new warnings from Russia’s media regulator.
The Novaya Gazeta newspaper, whose chief editor
Dmitry Muratov was last year awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, said it was
suspending publication until the end of the invasion.
Russia’s Korea solution?
Many in Ukraine remain
suspicious that Russia could use the talks as an opportunity to regroup and fix
the problems bedeviling its military.
“After a failure to capture Kyiv and remove
Ukraine’s government,
Putin is changing his main operational directions,”
intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov said.
He was aiming now to “impose a separation line
between the occupied and unoccupied regions”, the Ukrainian official said. “It
will be an attempt to set up South and North Koreas in Ukraine.”
The head of Ukraine’s Lugansk separatist region says
it may hold a referendum on becoming part of Russia.
But resistance in besieged Mariupol is the main
obstacle preventing Moscow from gaining unbroken control of land from the
Donbas to the
Crimea.
In the southern town of Mykolaiv, under heavy assault for
weeks, the bombardments appeared to be easing.
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