© KEYSTONE/EPA/ROMAN PILIPEY
At least 13 people were killed Monday in a bombardment on Makariv, located on one of the main axes leading to Kiev from the west, while Russians and Ukrainians began a 3rd round of negotiations to evacuate civilians surrounded by the army Russian.
On the twelfth day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, shelling on Makariv hit an industrial bakery, according to the Ukrainian emergency services. About thirty people were there, according to the Ukrainian emergency services.
This new deadly bombardment comes as the Russian army continues its advance towards the capital, Kiev, which expects an attack “in the coming days”, according to the Ukrainian Ministry of the Interior.
“Every house, every street, every checkpoint will resist until death if necessary,” promised the mayor of Kiev and ex-boxing champion Vitali Klitschko, in a video on Instagram.
The humanitarian situation is also worsening day by day, with several towns under siege where food is beginning to run out and streams of inhabitants desperately trying to get out.
In Irpin, the last city-lock before Kiev coming from the west, 10,000 people have borrowed in recent days an improbable plank of wood, half sunk in the water, to escape the bombardments. The concrete bridge, gaping over the river, was destroyed by Ukrainian forces.
Children, the elderly – some carried on carpets serving as stretchers – and families abandon strollers, suitcases too heavy to rush into buses and vans.
The port city of Odessa, on the shores of the Black Sea, is also increasingly threatened. Distraught families have entrusted sick old parents, too weak to flee the city, as well as their pets to the Archangelo Mikhailovsky monastery, with golden and gray domes, AFP noted.
“Political cynicism”
New fighting also took place near Sumy, in the northeast, according to the head of the military administration of the region, Dmitry Jivitsky. “There are deaths,” he wrote on Telegram.
In this context, the Russian and Ukrainian delegations met on the Polish-Belarusian border, for a third round of negotiations devoted to humanitarian corridors. The previous two rounds did not yield results.
Moscow announced on Monday morning the establishment of local ceasefires and the opening of corridors to allow the evacuation of civilians from several cities in Ukraine – including Kiev and Kharkiv, the country’s second largest city, in the east. – under heavy fire for several days.
But Ukraine refused to evacuate the civilians to Russia. Four of the six corridors proposed by Moscow went to Russia or Belarus, an allied country of Moscow from which the Russian army also entered Ukraine on February 24.
“This is not an acceptable option,” said Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk. “All of this is not serious, it is moral and political cynicism, which is unbearable to me”, added French President Emmanuel Macron, one of the rare Western leaders who continue to exchange with the master of the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin .
The Russian army had said that the decision to open humanitarian corridors was taken following a “personal request” from the French president addressed to his Russian counterpart.
The Russian representative to the talks between Moscow and Kiev, Vladimir Medinski, accused Ukraine of preventing the evacuation of civilians from combat zones and of “using them directly and indirectly, including as human shields, which is good certainly a war crime”.
During an exchange with the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, the Russian President accused the “Ukrainian nationalist battalions of hindering (the evacuations) by resorting to violence and various provocations”.
The European leader asked him to “guarantee the safe passage of humanitarian aid”.
1.7 million refugees
Ukrainians also continue to take the road to exile en masse. The war has already pushed more than 1.7 million people to seek refuge in neighboring countries, according to the UN.
Europe can expect to receive five million exiles if the bombardments of cities continue, estimated the head of European diplomacy Josep Borrell.
Education Minister Sergiy Shkarlet said for his part that 211 schools had been damaged in the bombardments.
Since the start of the invasion of Ukraine, described as a “special military operation” by Moscow, at least 406 civilians have been killed and 801 injured, according to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights of the United Nations. The UNHCR stresses, however, that its assessments are far below reality, as they only include duly confirmed information.
Diplomacy is also trying to regain its rights, with an announced meeting of Russian Foreign Ministers Sergei Lavrov, Ukrainian Dmytro Kuleba and their Turkish counterpart Mevlüt Cavusoglu Thursday in Turkey. Kyiv has yet to confirm its participation, however.
But the hopes of success are slim, Vladimir Putin continuing to pose as a precondition for any dialogue the acceptance by Kiev of all the demands of Moscow, in particular the demilitarization of Ukraine and a neutral status for the country.
US President Joe Biden was due to meet once more on Monday with Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, as Westerners consider a possible embargo on Russian oil exports.
Germany, very dependent on Russian hydrocarbons, opposes it. These imports are “essential” for the “daily life of citizens” in Europe and the supply of the continent cannot be assured otherwise at this stage, warned Olaf Scholz.
