(Updated with talks, fights, Putin-Macron interview, Putin, civilian balance sheet, Loukoil)
by Maksym Levin
BORODYANKA, Ukraine, March 3 (Reuters) – Ukraine on Thursday called for a ceasefire and the opening of humanitarian corridors to evacuate residents of towns besieged by the Russian army, whose offensive entered in its second week.
A US official said Russian forces were now at the gates of Kharkiv, the country’s second city, working to isolate Mariupol, still under Ukrainian control, and were 25 km from Kyiv, the capital. .
France estimated on Thursday that the worst was yet to come following a telephone conversation between Emmanuel Macron and Vladimir Poutine, who testified to the “determination” of the Russian leader, according to an adviser to the French head of state.
During a speech on national television, the Russian president estimated Thursday that the “special operation” in Ukraine was taking place according to the plans initially decided upon, praising the “heroism” of the Russian soldiers, and that it aimed to destroy the “anti-Russia” created by the West.
He assured that the Russian military had opened humanitarian corridors but that these were blocked by Ukrainian “nationalists”. He further promised compensation for the families of Russian soldiers killed or injured in action.
According to Western observers, Russian forces are working to surround Ukrainian towns, bomb them and deprive them of water and electricity to force residents to flee.
More than a million Ukrainians have already left their country, according to the United Nations refugee agency, most of them heading for Poland. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimated Thursday that “tens of millions of people” who remained in Ukraine were “potentially in danger of death.”
The conflict killed dozens of civilians, Ukrainian forces and the Russian army – nearly 500 Russian soldiers were killed according to Moscow, nearly 9,000 according to Kiev. UNHCR on Thursday reported 249 civilians killed and 553 injured.
NEW SESSION OF TALKS
Only one important Ukrainian city would have fallen for the moment, Kherson, a port located at the mouth of the Dnieper, on the edge of the Black Sea. Russian tanks from the Crimea region, annexed by Moscow in 2014, entered it on Wednesday and took control on Thursday, according to both sides. US military intelligence said Thursday that fighting was raging in the city; he adds ignore who controls it.
The situation is also critical in Mariupol, another port city caught between Russian forces from Crimea and the pro-Russian secessionist territories of neighboring Donbass. Surrounded, the city is subject to a deluge of fire, according to local authorities. Comparing the situation to the siege of Leningrad by the Nazis during World War II, the mayor denounced an attempt at “genocide” by the Ukrainian people.
Like the cities of Kharkiv and Chernihiv, also shelled, Mariupol was however still controlled Thursday by the Ukrainian army.
Rescue services announced on Thursday that they had removed 22 bodies from the rubble following a Russian airstrike in the Chernihiv region. Governor Vyacheslav Chaus had previously said that houses and two schools were hit.
The adviser to Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky, Mikhaïlo Podoliak, led a new session of talks with a Russian delegation on Thursday, in an undisclosed location. In a tweet, Podoliak clarified that the Ukrainian side demanded an immediate ceasefire, an armistice and “humanitarian corridors for the evacuation of civilians from the destroyed and constantly shelled towns and villages”.
The first session on Monday produced no concrete results.
The Ukrainian negotiators declared at the end of this second session of talks that they did not see the expected results obtained. However, they reported a compromise on a joint guarantee to create humanitarian corridors for the evacuation of civilians. These evacuations could also be accompanied by temporary ceasefires.
The two parties agreed to participate in a third round of talks soon, the Ukrainian side said.
Volodimir Zelenski, who is still in Kiev, from where he regularly sends video messages to his compatriots, assured Thursday morning that the lines of defense erected by the army and civilians who took up arms continued to resist the invader, despite heavy bombardment. “We have nothing to lose except our freedom,” he said.
Ukrainian forces also repelled a Russian assault in Borodyanka, a small town 60 km northwest of Kiev, where Russian armored carcasses are scattered on a highway and surrounding buildings have been destroyed.
LOUKOIL CALLS FOR AN END TO THE CONFLICT
“(The Russians) started firing from their armored vehicles towards the park in front of the Post Office,” a resident hiding in his apartment with his family told Reuters. “Then those bastards started a tank and shot at the supermarket which had already burned down. It caught fire again.”
While Russia is the target of unprecedented economic sanctions likely to plunge it into a serious financial crisis, its head of diplomacy, Sergey Lavrov, once again estimated on state television on Thursday that the reaction of Western countries to the invasion of Ukraine was a matter of “hysteria” and assured that it would eventually subside.
At the same time, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, declared on the contrary that the Twenty-Seven were preparing a new salvo of sanctions in the event of an escalation of the Russian offensive in Ukraine, and were at the same time studying the means of to pass Russian gas, oil and coal.
In Russia, where virtually all dissent has been stifled in recent years, the authorities have banned any criticism of the “special military operation” launched on February 24.
The Russian oil group Loukoil broke the omerta on Thursday by calling for an end to the conflict and its settlement by “diplomatic means”, becoming the first major company in the country to publicly oppose Vladimir Putin’s decisions.
For not respecting the ban, and while thousands of anti-war protesters have been arrested in recent days in Russia, two of the last independent media, the Dojd television channel and the Echo radio of Moscow, have been banned from broadcast Thursday, according to the Tass agency.
The countries of the European Union have implemented the decision of the Twenty-Seven to ban the RT channel and the Sputnik site, considered to be propaganda organs in the service of the Kremlin. (Reporting by Maksym Levin in Borodyanka, Pavel Polityuk, Natalia Zinets and Aleksandar Vasovic in Ukraine and other Reuters bureaus; Writing by Peter Graff; French version Tangi Salaün and Sophie Louet, Editing by Bertrand Boucey)