KYIV — Ukraine on Wednesday appealed for
Western military help, ahead of an emergency
NATO summit, and denounced Russian
“war crimes” in besieged places including the port of Mariupol where it says
mass starvation is possible.
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Tens of thousands
of residents have already fled the southern city, bringing harrowing testimony
of a “freezing hellscape riddled with dead bodies and destroyed buildings”,
according to Human Rights Watch.
But Ukrainian President
Volodymyr Zelensky said that
almost 100,000 people remained trapped by relentless Russian bombardment in
Mariupol without water, food and power.
The mayor of Kyiv, former world heavyweight boxing
champion Vitali Klitschko, said
Ukrainian forces were pushing the invaders back
in several areas around the capital.
“We are ready to fight for each building, each
street, every part of our city,” he told reporters. “We would rather die than
kneel in front of the Russians or surrender to the invaders.”
As President
Joe Biden travelled to the summits of
NATO, the G7, and EU in Brussels, Andriy Yermak, a top advisor to Zelensky,
said Ukraine was holding out “with superhuman courage”.
“But we cannot
win a war without offensive weapons, without medium-range missiles that can be
a means of deterrence,” Yermak said.
‘Ruins of Verdun’
NATO chief
Jens Stoltenberg said the leaders at Thursday’s summit would agree to “major increases of
forces” including four new battle groups in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, and
Slovakia.
The allies will also offer “additional support” to
Kyiv against nuclear and chemical threats, he said, after Biden warned anew
that Russia could be prepared to unleash horror in Ukraine.
But NATO members,
while maintaining a steady supply of anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles, have
balked at Zelensky’s demands to impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine, fearing
all-out war with nuclear-armed Russia.
Zelensky kept up the pressure on foreign allies,
using speeches to French and Japanese lawmakers to invoke their own national
traumas of the past.
He told the
French National Assembly that images of devastated cities such as Mariupol
“recall the ruins of Verdun as in the photos of
World War I that everyone has
seen”.
“The Russian army makes no distinction between
targets. They destroy residential areas, hospitals, schools, universities.”
“They do not take into account the concepts of war
crimes.”
Nearly a month into the invasion, peace talks have
agreed on daily humanitarian corridors for refugees, and Ukraine says it is
willing to countenance some Russian demands subject to a national referendum.
But it has
refused to bow to Russian pressure to disarm and renounce all Western
alliances, and Zelensky was also due Thursday to address the NATO meeting.
Ukraine’s lead
negotiator
Mykhaylo Podolyak said the peace talks were encountering
“significant difficulties”, after Moscow accused the United States of
undermining the process.
Russia meanwhile
refuses to rule out using nuclear weapons if it faces an “existential threat”,
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told CNN.
Pentagon
spokesman John Kirby slammed Moscow’s “dangerous” rhetoric.
Putin threatens ‘Russia’s future’
“Putin’s offensive is stuck
despite all the destruction that it is bringing day after day,” German
Chancellor
Olaf Scholz said in a speech to the Bundestag, warning of further
Western sanctions against Russia.
Putin “must hear the truth” that not only is the war
destroying Ukraine, “but also Russia’s future”, he said.
After Brussels, Biden will head on to Poland, which
has received the bulk of more than 3.6 million Ukrainians fleeing the war.
The president will consult with allies on new
sanctions and on potentially throwing Russia out of the G20, US officials said.
“We believe that it cannot be business as usual for
Russia in international institutions and in the international community,”
White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told reporters.
China, a leading member of the
G20, pushed back
against expelling Russia from the group of major economies, and Moscow said
Putin still intended to join its November summit in Indonesia.
Stoltenberg said
NATO feared that China could go further in its backing of Russia by providing
material support, although US officials said there was no sign of that
happening since Biden held a phone call with President
Xi Jinping last week.
Stoltenberg
demanded that China stop giving Russia diplomatic cover, and stop “spreading
blatant lies and misinformation” on its behalf.
On the ground,
Russia’s defense ministry has reported some advances in the southeast of
Ukraine and boasted of strikes using next-generation weaponry against “military
infrastructure” across the country.
But Ukraine and its allies have claimed
Russian forces are
severely depleted, poorly supplied, and still unable to carry out complex
operations.
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