Ukraine accused Russian forces on Saturday of killing seven civilians in an attack on women and children trying to flee fighting near Kyiv, and France said Russian president Vladimir Putin had shown he was not ready to make peace.
With Russia’s invasion in its third week, the Ukrainian intelligence service said the seven, including one child, were killed as they fled the village of Peremoha and that “the occupiers forced the remnants of the column to turn back”.
Reuters was unable immediately to verify the report and Russia offered no immediate comment. Moscow denies targeting civilians since invading Ukraine on February 24th. It blames Ukraine for failed attempts to evacuate civilians from encircled cities, an accusation Ukraine and its Western allies strongly reject.
Around 13,000 people were evacuated from a number of Ukrainian cities on Saturday, said deputy prime minister Iryna Vereshchuk, almost twice the number who managed to get out the previous day.
Mr Vereshchuk said in an online message that no one had managed to leave the besieged city of Mariupol and blamed obstruction by Russian forces. Moscow had earlier accused Ukrainian forces of intentionally trapping people there.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said earlier that Moscow was sending in new troops after Ukrainian forces put 31 of Russia’s battalion tactical groups out of action in what he called Russia’s largest army losses in decades. It was not possible to verify his statements.
He also said about 1,300 Ukrainian troops had been killed so far and urged the West to get more involved in peace negotiations. The president suggested Russian forces would face a fight to the death if they sought to enter the capital.
“If they decide to carpet bomb [Kyiv], and simply erase the history of this region ... and destroy all of us, then they will enter Kyiv. If that’s their goal, let them come in, but they will have to live on this land by themselves,” he said.
Mr Zelenskiy discussed the war with chancellor Olaf Scholz and president Emmanuel Macron, and the German and French leaders then spoke to Mr Putin by phone and urged him to order an immediate ceasefire.
A Kremlin statement on the 75-minute call made no mention of a ceasefire and a French presidency official said: “We did not detect a willingness on Putin’s part to end the war”.
Mr Putin spoke about “issues related to agreements under discussion to implement the Russian demands” for ending the war, the Kremlin said without providing details.
For ending hostilities, Moscow has demanded that Ukraine drop its bid to join Nato and adopt a neutral status; acknowledge the Russian sovereignty over Crimea, which it annexed from Ukraine in 2014; recognise the independence of separatist regions in the country’s east; and agree to demilitarise.
Mr Zelenskiy told Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett on Saturday that he would be open to meeting Mr Putin in Jerusalem to discuss an end to the war, but that there would first have to be a ceasefire.
Mr Bennett recently met in Moscow with Mr Putin, who has ignored previous offers of talks from Mr Zelenskiy.
Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov accused the US of escalating tensions and said the situation had been complicated by convoys of Western arms shipments to Ukraine that Russian forces considered “legitimate targets”.
Crisis talks between Moscow and Kyiv have been continuing via a video link, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov was quoted as saying by Russia’s RIA news agency. He gave no details but Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba said Kyiv would not surrender or accept any ultimatums.
Humanitarian corridors
Air raid sirens blared across most Ukrainian cities on Saturday, local media reported.
Russian rocket attacks destroyed a Ukrainian airbase and hit an ammunition depot near the town of Vasylkiv in the Kyiv region, Interfax Ukraine quoted its mayor as saying.
The exhausted-looking governor of Chernihiv, around 150km northeast of Kyiv, gave a video update in front of the ruins of the city’s Ukraine Hotel.
“There is no such hotel any more,” Viacheslav Chaus said, wiping tears from his eyes. “But Ukraine itself still exists, and it will prevail.”
Britain’s defence ministry said fighting northwest of the capital continued, with the bulk of Russian ground forces 25 km from the centre of Kyiv, which it has said Russia could attack within days.
Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Sumy and Mariupol remained encircled under heavy Russian shelling, it said.
Russia’s invasion has been almost universally condemned around the world and that has drawn tough Western sanctions.
The Russian bombardment has trapped thousands of people in besieged cities and sent 2.5 million Ukrainians fleeing to neighbouring countries. Mr Zelenskiy said the conflict meant some small Ukrainian towns no longer existed.
The US said it would rush up to $200 million in additional small arms, anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons to Ukraine, where officials have pleaded for more military aid.
Russia calls its actions in Ukraine a “special operation” that it says is not designed to occupy territory but to destroy its neighbour’s military capabilities and “de-Nazify” the country.
Ukrainian officials had planned to use humanitarian corridors from Mariupol as well as towns and villages in the regions of Kyiv, Sumy and some other areas on Saturday.
But Russian shelling threatened attempts to evacuate trapped civilians, they said.
A senior Russian defence ministry official said the humanitarian situation in Ukraine continued to decline rapidly and blamed Ukrainian fighters, accusing them of mining neighbourhoods and destroying bridges and roads, the RIA news agency reported.
Russian officials have previously accused Ukrainian forces of shelling their own people and then seeking to blame Moscow, allegations that Kyiv and Western nations dismissed as lies.
The governor of the Kyiv region, Oleksiy Kuleba, said fighting and threats of Russian air attacks were continuing on Saturday morning though some evacuations were proceeding.
The Donetsk region’s governor said constant shelling was complicating bringing aid into the southern city of Mariupol.
Images taken on Saturday by private US satellite firm Maxar showed fires burning in the western section of Mariupol and dozens of apartment buildings heavily damaged.
“There are reports of looting and violent confrontations among civilians over what little basic supplies remain in the city,” the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said.
“Medicines for life-threatening illnesses are quickly running out, hospitals are only partially functioning, and the food and water are in short supply.”
Burials
People were boiling ground water for drinking, using wood to cook food and burying their dead near where they lay, a staff member for Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders) in Mariupol said. “Neighbours just dig a hole in the ground and put the dead bodies inside,” he said.
At least 1,582 civilians in Mariupol have been killed as a result of Russian shelling and a 12-day blockade, the city council said on Friday. It was not possible to verify casualty figures.
Efforts to isolate Russia economically have stepped up, with the United States imposing new sanctions on senior Kremlin officials and Russian oligarchs on Friday.
European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said the EU on Saturday would suspend Moscow’s privileged trade and economic treatment, crack down on its use of crypto-assets, and ban the import of iron and steel goods from Russia, as well as the export of luxury goods in the other direction.
Mariupol
Earlier on Saturday, Russian forces pounding the port city of Mariupol shelled a mosque that was sheltering more than 80 people, including children, the Ukrainian government said on Saturday.
Fighting raged on the outskirts of Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and Russia kept up its bombardment of other resisting cities.
There was no immediate word of casualties from the shelling of Mariupol’s city centre mosque.
The encircled city of 446,000 people has endured some of Ukraine’s worst misery since Russia invaded, with unceasing barrages thwarting repeated attempts to bring in food, water and medicine, evacuate trapped civilians and even bury the dead.
“They are bombing [Mariupol] 24 hours a day, launching missiles. It is hatred. They kill children,” Mr Zelenskiy said during a video address.
An Associated Press journalist in Mariupol witnessed tanks firing on an apartment building and was with a group of hospital workers who came under sniper fire on Friday.
A worker shot in the hip survived, but conditions in the hospital were deteriorating: electricity was reserved for operating tables, and people with nowhere else to go lined the hallways.
‘New stage of terror’
Mr Zelenskiy encouraged his people to keep up their resistance, which many analysts said has prevented the rapid offensive and military victory the Kremlin likely expected while planning to invade Russia’s ex-Soviet neighbour.
“The fact that the whole Ukrainian people resist these invaders has already gone down in history, but we do not have the right to let up our defence, no matter how difficult it may be for us,” he said.
Mr Zelenskiy again deplored Nato’s refusal to declare a no-fly zone over Ukraine and said Ukraine has sought ways to procure air defence assets, though he did not elaborate.
Mr Zelenskiy also accused Russia of employing “a new stage of terror” with the alleged kidnapping of the mayor of Melitopol, a city 191km west of Mariupol.
After residents of the occupied city demonstrated for the mayor’s release on Saturday, the Ukrainian leader called on Russian forces to heed the calls.
“Please hear in Moscow!” Mr Zelenskiy said. “Another protest against Russian troops, against attempts to bring the city to its knees.”
In multiple areas around the capital, artillery barrages sent residents scurrying for shelter as air raid sirens wailed.
As artillery pounded Kyiv’s north-western outskirts, black and white columns of smoke rose south-west of the capital after a strike on an ammunition depot in the town of Vasylkiv caused hundreds of small explosions.
A frozen food warehouse just outside the capital also was struck in an apparent effort to target Kyiv’s food supply.
Ukraine’s military and volunteer forces have been preparing for an all-out assault.
Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Thursday that about 2 million people, half the metropolitan area’s inhabitants, had left and that “every street, every house ... is being fortified”.
Mr Zelenskiy said on Saturday that Russia would need to carpet-bomb the Ukrainian capital and kill its residents to take the city.
“They will come here only if they kill us all,” he said. “If that is their goal, let them come.”
The Ukrainian Embassy in Turkey said 86 Turkish nationals, including 34 children, were among the people who had sought safety in Mariupol’s mosque of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent and his wife Roksolana, which was modelled on one of the most famous and largest mosques in Istanbul.
Russian forces have hit at least two dozen hospitals and medical facilities since invading Ukraine on February 24th, according to the World Health Organisation.
Thousands of soldiers on both sides are believed to have been killed along with many civilians.
The Ukrainian chief prosecutor’s office said on Saturday at least 79 children have been killed and nearly 100 have been wounded. – AP/Reuters