strikes
Adds new Russian strikes, Kharkiv casualties, evacuations, Zelensky’s message to Switzerland, India urged by Japan to condemn invasion
kyiv (awp/afp) – Ukraine on Saturday called on China, Moscow’s strategic ally, to finally “condemn Russian barbarism”, after new strikes, including with a brand new hypersonic missile touted by Vladimir Putin, which left dozens dead.
Russian air raids followed one another at a rapid pace during the day on Mykolaiv, a city in southern Ukraine where dozens of soldiers were killed the day before in a strike against an army barracks, indicated on social networks local governor Vitaliy Kim.
He did not provide details on the extent of the damage or the number of possible victims.
In the west of the country, the Russian Ministry of Defense claimed to have used brand new “Kinjal” hypersonic missiles, touted by Vladimir Putin, the day before to destroy an underground weapons warehouse.
“Ukraine has unfortunately become a testing ground for the entire Russian missile arsenal,” Ukrainian air force spokesman Yuri Ignat told the Ukraïnska Pravda website.
In Mykolaiv, witnesses gave assessments varying from simple to double after the destruction by six rockets on Friday of a military barracks.
“No less than 200 soldiers were sleeping in the barracks,” said a 22-year-old soldier interviewed on the spot, according to whom “at least 50 bodies were extracted”.
Another soldier estimated that there could have been 100 dead.
The Russians “cowardly carried out missile strikes against sleeping soldiers. A rescue operation is still going on,” Governor Vitaly Kim said in a video posted on Facebook on Saturday.
1,400 airstrikes
According to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, Russian troops, whose progress on the ground has been much more difficult than expected in the face of fierce Ukrainian resistance, have carried out 291 missile strikes and 1,403 air raids since the start of the invasion. February 24.
In Zaporozhye (west of kyiv), the regional administration indicated that a bombardment on Friday had left nine dead and 17 wounded. Seven people were also killed and five injured by Russian mortar fire in Makariv, about fifty kilometers west of kyiv, according to regional police.
The bombings have not ceased either in kyiv, the capital and in Kharkiv, a large Russian-speaking city in the northwest, where at least 500 people have been killed since the start of the war, according to official Ukrainian figures. A man and a 9-year-old child were again killed there by shelling, local authorities said on Saturday.
In Mariupol, a port city in the south-east, surrounded and bombarded with its inhabitants for several weeks, kyiv admitted having lost access to the Sea of Azov.
The Russian army said on Friday that it had succeeded in entering the city.
According to an adviser to the Ukrainian Ministry of the Interior, Vadym Denysenko, quoted by the Interfax-Ukraine agency, the situation there is “catastrophic”.
The results of Wednesday’s bombardment of a theater where more than a thousand people had taken refuge in an underground shelter, which kyiv accuses Moscow of having struck “knowingly”, was still unknown on Saturday.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said more than 130 people had been rescued from the rubble, some with “serious injuries”, but operations continued under shelling to rescue others.
Fleeing “hell” from Mariupol, families recounted the corpses lying in the streets for days, hunger, thirst and the biting cold of nights spent in cellars with sub-zero temperatures.
China and the “right decision”
Faced with the continuation of deadly bombardments, and negotiations that drag on, President Zelensky urged China, a strategic ally of Moscow, a permanent member of the UN Security Council and one of the great absentees, with India , from the chorus of condemnations and sanctions that fell on Moscow, to take a stand.
“China can be an important part of the global security system if it makes the right decision to support the coalition of civilized countries and condemn Russian barbarism,” tweeted Mykhaïlo Podoliak, an adviser to Mr. Zelensky and one of the participants in the meetings. negotiations with Russia.
US President Joe Biden spoke on Friday for nearly two hours by videoconference with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, to explain to him “the consequences if China provides material support to Russia”, according to the White House.
But Mr. Xi maintained the ambiguity, confining himself to stressing that military conflicts were “in no one’s interest”, according to Chinese television.
In New Delhi, it was the Japanese Prime Minister, Fumio Kishida, who urged India, a big buyer of Russian arms and oil, to come out of its reserve and condemn the invasion. His Indian counterpart, Narendra Modi, refrained from mentioning Ukraine, and the joint statement was limited to a call for “an immediate cessation of violence.”
President Zelensky, however, once again stressed that “negotiations on peace and security for Ukraine are the only chance for Russia to minimize the damage caused by its own mistakes”, in a video posted on Facebook, filmed at night on a deserted street in kyiv.
Ukraine’s “unchanged position”
Several rounds of negotiations between kyiv and Moscow have taken place since February 24. The fourth opened on Monday at the level of delegations negotiating by videoconference.
The head of the Russian delegation said on Friday evening that he saw a “reconciliation” of positions on the question of a neutral status for Ukraine and the demilitarization of the country.
But the Ukrainian negotiator Mikhaïlo Podoliak underlined that the “declarations of the Russian side are only their requests for departure”.
“Our position has not changed: ceasefire, withdrawal of (Russian) troops and strong security guarantees with concrete formulas,” he tweeted.
Ukraine refuses a simple status of neutrality and demands “absolute security guarantees”.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Thursday that the Ukrainian proposal was that of a “collective security agreement” involving the five members of the Security Council as well as Turkey and Germany.
For the head of British diplomacy, however, Liz Truss, these talks are only a “smokescreen” before a new offensive. She said in an interview with The Times that she was “very skeptical” about the negotiations.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian made a similar analysis on Thursday, saying that Russia is only looking for “Ukrainian capitulation” through “the worsening of the siege war”.
Russian “war crime”
The Ukrainian president said that 180,000 people had so far been able to flee from combat zones through humanitarian corridors.
“But the occupiers continue to block humanitarian aid, especially around sensitive areas. It’s a well-known tactic. (…) It’s a war crime,” said Mr. Zelensky.
According to Ukrainian authorities, 6,623 people were evacuated through humanitarian corridors on Saturday, including 4,128 fleeing Mariupol and 1,820 fleeing Kyiv.
Since February 24, more than 3.2 million Ukrainians have taken the road to exile, nearly two-thirds of them to Poland, sometimes only a stage before continuing their exodus.
According to a tally as of March 18 by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Ukraine, at least 816 civilians have been killed in Ukraine and more than 1,333 injured. He pointed out that this assessment was probably much lower than the reality.
kyiv, the capital, has been emptied of at least half of its 3.5 million inhabitants. According to the town hall, 222 people — including 60 civilians — were killed there.
No overall assessment has been provided at this stage. Mr. Zelensky mentioned on March 12 the death of “about 1,300” Ukrainian soldiers, while Moscow only reported nearly 500 dead in its ranks on March 2.
Ukraine said it had “562 Russian prisoners of war”, and held them in accordance with international law, “like a civilized country”.
In a video link with Bern, Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday blasted companies like the Nestlé group that continue to operate in Russia. He called on Switzerland to freeze the assets of Russian billionaires and those close to the Kremlin.
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