The situation in the strategic port of Mariupol is “inhuman”, the Ukrainian president said on Saturday evening, calling on the West to “immediately” provide the heavy weapons he has been demanding for several weeks, while Russia claims to control almost all of the city and launches a new appeal to its last defenders to lay down their arms.
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“The situation in Mariupol remains as serious as it can get. Simply inhuman,” Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video message. “This is what the Russian Federation did deliberately. (…) Russia is deliberately trying to destroy anyone in Mariupol’, in southeastern Ukraine.
According to him, there are only “two options”: “Either the partners provide Ukraine with all the necessary heavy weapons, the planes and, without any exaggeration, immediately” to “reduce the pressure on Mariupol and lift the siege”. of this city inhabited by 441,000 people before the invasion on February 24.
“Either — the path of negotiation, in which the role of partners should also be decisive,” the Ukrainian president continued, saying that the search for a “military or diplomatic” solution had been a “daily” activity from the start. of the blockade but proved “extremely difficult”.
Remarks published when the Russian Ministry of Defense asked the last Ukrainian fighters entrenched in the Azovstal metallurgical complex to cease fighting on Sunday at 6 a.m. Moscow time (0300 GMT), and to evacuate the premises before 1300 (1000 GMT).
“All those who have given up their arms will be guaranteed to have their lives saved,” the ministry assured on Telegram. “It’s their only chance.”
Apart from this pocket of resistance, “the entire territory of the city of Mariupol has been cleared of militants from the Nazi Azov formation, foreign mercenaries and Ukrainian soldiers”, he said.
s had left their country in the past 24 hours.