Kiev, Ukraine (AP) – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned his people Saturday morning that the departure of Russian forces would create a “complete catastrophe” outside the capital as they leave the mines. ” all over the place ”, including around homes and corpses.
He issued the warning after the humanitarian crisis deepened in the besieged city of Mariupol, where Russian forces blocked evacuation operations for the second consecutive day and the Kremlin blamed Ukrainians for the helicopter attack. . Fuel storage on Russian soil.
Ukraine has denied responsibility for the explosion, but if Moscow’s statement is confirmed, it will be the first known attack of the war, in which a Ukrainian plane entered Russia’s airspace.
An inconvenience for the Russian army: Two low-flying Ukrainian helicopters crossed the border in a daring attack on Russian territory, hitting an oil depot.
This is the first time since the war began that Russia has reported a Ukrainian air strike on its territory. pic.twitter.com/guyryMa5MN– Cliff Levy (@cliffordlevy) April 1, 2022
“Of course, this is not something that can be seen as creating favorable conditions for negotiations to continue,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said five weeks after Moscow began sending more than 150,000 troops to the border. Ukraine.
Russia has continued to withdraw some of its ground forces.Areas surrounding Kiev After announcing earlier this week it will reduce military activity near the Ukrainian capital and the northern city of Chernigov.
“The whole territory was cultivated. “They work on houses, mining equipment, even the corpses of dead people,” Zelensky said in a video speech to the nation overnight. “Lots of cables to travel, lots of other dangers.”
He urged residents to wait for their normal lives to be restored until they are convinced that the mines have been cleaned up and the threat of bombing is gone.
Before the Russians resumed bombing Kiev and Chernigov, Ukrainian troops used retreats to launch counterattacks and capture several towns and villages.
The peace talks between Russia and Ukraine are still ongoing, in this photo, published by the main Russian negotiator Vladimir Medinsky and then somehow canceled. pic.twitter.com/F95SXJYWaw
– max seddon (@maxseddon) April 1, 2022
However, Ukraine and its allies warn that the Kremlin is not shrinking to build confidence at the negotiating table, as it claims, but is conducting escorts and moving troops to the east of the country. These movements appear to be preparing for an intensified attack in the east of the country, mainly in the Russian-speaking Donbass region, which includes Mariupol.
Zelensky warned of tough fighting as the Russians redeployed troops. “We’re preparing for a more active defense,” he said.
He said nothing about the latest round of talks, which took place on video on Friday. Earlier this week, Ukraine said it was ready to abandon its offer to join NATO and declare its own neutral – Moscow’s basic need – in exchange for security guarantees from several other countries.
The aggression claimed thousands of lives and expelled more than 4 million refugees from Ukraine.
Mariupol, a ruined and besieged southern port city, suffered the worst in the war. His arrest is the first reward for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who will give his country a land bridge over Ukraine, which was seized in 2014.
Mariupol’s fate could determine the course of negotiations to end the war, said Volodymyr Fesenko, head of the Ukrainian think tank Penta.
“Mariupol has become a symbol of Ukrainian resistance”, Fesenko said, “and without his conquest, Putin would not be able to sit at the negotiating table”. The fall of Mariupol, he said, “paves the way for a peace agreement”.
On Friday, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said it had been unable to conduct an operation to evacuate civilians from Mariupol by bus. The team is said to be coming but has to return.
City officials said the Russians were blocking entry into Mariupol.
“We do not see the real desire of the Russians and their comrades to evacuate Mariupol residents to Ukrainian -controlled territory,” Mariupol adviser Petro Andriushchenko wrote in a Telegram message. .
He said Russian forces were “definitely not allowed any humanitarian cargo, even in small quantities, into the city.”
About 100,000 people remained in the city, up from 430,000 before the war, and weeks of Russian bombing and street fighting left severe shortages of water, food, fuel and medicine.
“We’re running out of adjectives to describe the horrors that the people of Mariupol have experienced,” said Evan Watson, a spokesman for the Red Cross.
On Thursday, Russian forces intercepted a convoy of 45 buses trying to evacuate people from Mariupol and seized 14 tons of food and medical supplies for the city, Ukrainian authorities said.
I am led by a @IAEAorg Mission service and support #Cernobyl Nuclear power plant soon. This will be the first in a series of such nuclear safety and security missions #Ukraine.
– Rafael Marianogros (@rafaelmgrossi) April 1, 2022
Zelensky said more than 3,000 people left Mariupol on Friday. He said he discussed the humanitarian catastrophe by phone with French President Emmanuel Macron and on a visit to Kiev with European Parliament President Roberta Metzola.
“Europe has no right to remain silent about what is happening in our Mariupol,” Zelensky said. The whole world must respond to this humanitarian catastrophe.
Elsewhere, at least three Russian ballistic missiles were launched from the Crimean peninsula in the Odessa region of the Black Sea on Friday night, regional leader Maxim Marchenko said. The Ukrainian army said the Iskander missiles were focused on critical infrastructure but did not hit their targets due to Ukrainian air defense forces. It is not clear where they entered. Marchenko said there were casualties, but did not specify.
Odessa is the largest port in Ukraine and its naval headquarters.
Regarding the explosion at the fuel depot, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said two Ukrainian helicopters flew very low and attacked a civilian oil depot outside the city of Belgorod, about 25 kilometers away. (16 miles) from the border of Ukraine.
The regional governor said two depot employees were injured, but the Rosneft State Oil Company denied they were hurt.
“For some reason they said we did it, but it doesn’t really correspond to reality,” Olek Danilov, secretary of the National Security Council of Ukraine, said on Ukrainian television.
Russia has already reported attacks on Ukraine’s border, including an incident last week in which a military chaplain was killed but there was no intrusion into its airspace.
Between Russia’s withdrawal from the ground and its continued bombing, the Ukrainian army claimed they had recaptured 29 communities in the Kiev and Chernigov regions.
Russian forces in the northeast also continued bombing Kharkov and in the southeast they tried to seize the cities of Popasna and Rubizhne, as well as Mariupol, the Ukrainian military said.
Meanwhile, Russia on Friday began its annual spring ban, which aims to gather 134,500 men for a year of military service. Russian officials have said recruits will not be sent to front lines or “hot spots”, but many young Russians are skeptical and fearful that they will be involved in the war.
Outside Kiev, where Russian troops withdrew, damaged vehicles on the streets of Irpin, a suburban area popular with young families, are now in ruins. Ambulance personnel carried the elderly to a dilapidated bridge.
Three wooden crosses were marked on the graves of a mother-child and a stranger next to a residential building damaged by the bombing. One of the residents, who only named Lila by her name, said he helped bury them quickly on March 5, before Russian troops entered.
“They fired artillery and burned them alive,” he said.
An Irpin resident, named only after Andrew, said the Russians packed up and left on Tuesday. The next day, they bombed the city for about an hour before it was recaptured by Ukrainian soldiers.
“I don’t think it’s over yet,” Andrew said. “They’ll be back”.
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Reported by Karmanau from Lviv, Ukraine. Journalists from Andrea Rosa Irpin, Ukraine, and the Associated Press from around the world contributed to this report.
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Source: Huffpost
