Ukraine has rejected a Russian delay to cede control of the beleaguered port city of Mariupol, the scene of some of the fiercest fighting since Moscow launched its invasion more than three weeks ago.
The Russian Defense Ministry said on Sunday it would open humanitarian corridors from Mariupol from 10 a.m. local time on Monday and asked Ukrainian forces to lay down their arms and leave. He demanded that kyiv respond in writing to his ultimatum by 5 a.m. Monday.
But the Ukrainian government said it would refuse to return the city. “There can be no question of surrendering the city and laying down arms. We demand that the corridor be opened,” Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said Monday morning, as quoted by the Ukrainska Pravda news site.
Russia – which called its invasion a ‘special operation’ to ‘liberate’ Ukraine – claimed kyiv was using ‘Nazis’, ‘foreign mercenaries’ and ‘bandits’ to hold up to 130,000 civilians Held hostage. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, he denied responsibility for civilian casualties in Mariupol and blamed them on “provocations” by Ukrainian nationalists.
The ultimatum came as heavy fighting engulfed Mariupol on Sunday, with Russian forces tightening their grip and shelling a school where around 400 residents were sheltering.
The eastern port city has been devastated by relentless bombardment, with entire neighborhoods reduced to heaps of smoldering rubble. Electricity, gas and water have been cut off and the trapped residents are without food.
The Ukrainian armed forces said the situation was “difficult: there is famine in the city, street fighting, people are trying to leave”. Local authorities in Mariupol said “civilians are still under rubble” after the school was shelled.
Russia’s advance in Mariupol came after kyiv said it had been cut off from the strategically important Sea of Azov, a conduit to the Black Sea. Capturing Mariupol would give the Russians control of part of Ukraine’s southern coast.
kyiv also said Moscow had used its new hypersonic missiles against civilian areas elsewhere in Ukraine, in the first confirmation that the Kremlin had deployed the weapons in the conflict.
Moscow said it used the Kinzhal, which it says can travel at 10 times the speed of sound, twice in the past three days: to destroy a fuel depot in southern Ukraine and to target a facility ammunition storage facility in the west of the country.
Russia says Andrei Paliy, deputy commander of its Black Sea Fleet, died in the Battle of Mariupol. Paliy’s death makes him the seventh high-ranking Russian officer Ukraine claims to have killed during the war.
Meanwhile, Turkey, which mediates alongside Israel between Russia and Ukraine, said the two countries are converging on key aspects.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said “the parties are close to an agreement on fundamental issues”.
“It’s not so easy to negotiate while the war is going on, or to agree while civilians are dying. But I mean there is momentum,” he said.
kyiv and its Western allies fear Russian President Vladimir Putin is buying time in peace talks to replenish Moscow’s forces and launch a broader offensive.
Mariupol’s status is a sticking point in the talks because it is part of Ukrainian-held territory claimed by Moscow-backed separatists, according to two people briefed on the peace efforts.
The pro-government Turkish newspaper Hurriyet reported that the two countries were moving towards an agreement on kyiv’s declaration of neutrality and the abandonment of its desire for NATO membership, the “demilitarization” of Ukraine in exchange of collective security guarantees, what Russia calls “denazification” and the lifting of restrictions on the use of Russian in Ukraine.
Two people familiar with the talks said a compromise was likely to involve token concessions from kyiv on what Russia calls “denazification”.
But Linda Thomas-Greenfield, US ambassador to the UN, accused Moscow of not participating fully in the talks. “The negotiations seem to be one-sided,” she said. “The Russians have not considered any possibility of a negotiated and diplomatic solution.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the talks were worth continuing even if they had a “1% chance of success” and warned that a failure in the talks would risk “a Third World War”.
“We have demonstrated the dignity of our people and our army. . . But unfortunately, our dignity will not save lives. So I think we have to use any format, any chance, in order to have the opportunity to negotiate,” he told CNN.
Zelensky said Western leaders told him Ukraine would not be allowed to join NATO or the EU although “publicly the doors will remain open”.
US President Joe Biden will travel to Europe this week to attend Thursday’s NATO summit in Brussels, but will not travel to Ukraine, the White House announced on Sunday.
Russia publicly stands by Putin’s demands in the early days of the invasion, including vaguely defined calls to “demilitarize” and “denazify” Ukraine. Moscow also wants Kyiv to recognize its 2014 annexation of Crimea and the independence of two Russian-backed breakaway territories in the eastern Donbass region.
However, as his invasion stalled, Russia quietly dropped its vow to remove Zelensky and made suggestions to carve the country into Moscow-backed fiefdoms and a rump state.
Ukraine has ruled out territorial concessions to Russia and said negotiations over areas seized by Moscow before this year would require separate talks between Zelensky and Putin.
A possible deal would require Russia to announce a ceasefire and withdraw its troops from Ukrainian territory to their positions when Putin launched the invasion on February 24.
A compromise is likely to involve Kyiv making token concessions by banning certain groups or changing the names of streets named after Ukrainian partisans who fought alongside Nazi Germany against the USSR in World War II. world, said two people briefed on the talks.
Russia is also likely to ease Ukraine’s demand to make Russian the country’s second official language if kyiv rolls back laws limiting its use, one of the people added.
Putin justified the invasion by saying that Russia is liberating Ukraine from the Nazis, even though Zelensky is Jewish and far-right nationalist groups have little influence in the country.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told NBC News it was “far too soon” to say whether the peace talks could succeed, but stressed the need to prevent the conflict from becoming “a war between NATO and Russia in Europe”.
Additional reporting by Kiran Stacey in Washington
