© KEYSTONE/AP/Evgeniy Maloletka
The Ukrainian authorities are worried regarding a worsening of the already “catastrophic” humanitarian situation in Mariupol. Russian and Ukrainian negotiators are to meet on Tuesday for new talks in Istanbul.
After Moscow announced on Friday a “concentration of its efforts on the liberation of Donbass”, this strategic port on the Sea of Azov, located at the extreme south of this mining basin, risks suffering a “worsening” of its situation. , warned Oleksiï Arestovych, an adviser to the Ukrainian presidency, in a video message on Telegram.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky denounced a total blockade of this city which the Russian army has been trying to seize since the end of February, and where some 100,000 people are still stuck.
“All entrances and exits from the city are blocked (…) it is impossible to bring food and medicine into Mariupol,” he said on Sunday evening. “Russian forces are bombing humanitarian aid convoys and killing the drivers,” he added, indicating that the streets were littered with “corpses” that were impossible to bury.
City turned to “dust”
“The population is fighting to survive. The humanitarian situation is catastrophic,” said the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry on its Twitter account. “The Russian armed forces are turning the city into dust.”
According to a town hall report in mid-March, more than 2,000 civilians have been killed in Mariupol since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24.
And we still do not know, nearly two weeks following the bombing of its theater, the fate of the hundreds of civilians who had taken refuge there: the municipality, citing witnesses, said it feared around 300 dead. But an elected municipal official from Mariupol who fled the city on the day of this bombardment indicated that any count of the victims was impossible.
Ukraine’s neutrality on the table
Emmanuel Macron, who has already spoken eight times with Vladimir Putin since the beginning of the Russian invasion on February 24, remains convinced that the path of dialogue with Moscow is still possible, “to stop the war that Russia has launched in Ukraine, without going to war”.
On the diplomatic front, Russian and Ukrainian negotiators are due to arrive in Istanbul on Monday for a new round of talks to try to end a conflict that has already forced more than 3.8 million Ukrainians to flee their country, according to the UN, and caused some 63 billion in damage to the country’s infrastructure, according to a study by the kyiv School of Economics.
One of the important points of the negotiations concerns “security guarantees and neutrality, the nuclear-free status of our state”, President Zelensky told Russian media on Sunday.
This point of the negotiations “is studied in depth”, he said. But it will require a referendum and security guarantees, he warned, accusing Russian President Vladimir Putin and his entourage of “draging things out”.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, however, tempered expectations on Monday, saying negotiations so far had not produced “significant progress”.
A negotiating session had already taken place on March 10 in Turkey, in Antalya, at the level of foreign ministers, but had not resulted in any concrete progress. Since then, discussions have continued by videoconference, deemed “difficult” by both sides.
Fierce fighting in the east
On the ground, the Russian noose seemed to be loosening in certain cities such as Mykolaiv, a lock city on the road to Odessa, Ukraine’s largest port, where the inhabitants have found some hope following terrible weeks. during which the Russian army tried in vain to take the city.
The front has even retreated significantly, with a Ukrainian counter-offensive on Kherson, some 80 km to the south-east, the only major city which the Russian army has claimed to have taken completely since the start of its invasion of Ukraine. February 24.
But the violence continues elsewhere, particularly in the east of the country: fierce fighting took place once more on Sunday evening near Izium, according to presidential adviser Arestovych. In Oskil, a nearby village, seven people were killed and five injured in Russian artillery fire, according to the regional prosecutor’s office.
A hundred kilometers away, Kharkiv, the second largest city in Ukraine, is shelled almost every day. On the north-eastern outskirts of this city, Saltivka, a working-class district of tall blocks of buildings, is nothing more than a devastated battlefield, a ghost town swept by the winds where only a few survive, buried in the cellars, a handful of traumatized old people.
In the Lugansk region, one person died and another injured in Russian bombardments, said the head of the regional administration Serguiï Gaïdaï.
Several explosions also sounded in the kyiv region, said Defense Ministry adviser Anton Gerashchenko.
“The enemy is trying to break through around kyiv and block the roads,” Ganna Malyar, deputy defense minister, told Ukrainian television. “kyiv’s defense continues,” she added.
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said the authorities had given up opening humanitarian corridors on Monday, fearing possible “provocations” by Russian troops.
Call for boycott
On Sunday, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kouleba called for a boycott of the French supermarkets Auchan – which have chosen to stay in Russia – as well as the Leroy-Merlin (DIY) and Décathlon (sport) brands, owned by the same family group. For its part, the Dutch brewer Heineken announced on Monday that it would leave Russia, where it has 1,800 employees.
In Warsaw, stars of music and sport took the stage on Sunday during a telethon in favor of Ukraine, broadcast by the Polish public channel TVP in more than 20 countries. And in Los Angeles, a minute’s silence was called for in tribute to Ukraine, during the 94th Academy Awards on Sunday evening.