ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine —
Ukrainian officials Saturday accused Russia of
thwarting a fresh attempt to evacuate civilians from Mariupol and killing six
people in a strike on Odessa, all but burying hopes of a truce for Orthodox
Easter.
اضافة اعلان
With the war
poised to enter its third month on Sunday, Ukrainian authorities said “fierce
battles” were raging in the east and the
UN said nearly 5.2 million people had
fled the country.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called for a meeting with Russian counterpart
Vladmir Putin “to end the war”, which began with a full-scale Russian invasion
on February 24.
“I think that
whoever started this war will be able to end it,” Zelensky said, adding he was
“not afraid” to meet the Russian leader. But he again stressed that Kyiv would
abandon talks with Moscow if its troops in the besieged port city of Mariupol
were killed.
Around 200
residents gathered at an evacuation meeting point announced by Kyiv in Mariupol
on Saturday but they were “dispersed” by Russian forces, city official
Petro Andryushchenko said on Telegram, adding: “The evacuation was thwarted.”
He claimed
others had been told to board buses headed to places controlled by Russia. The
strategic city has been devastated by weeks of intense Russian bombardment.
Deputy Prime
Minister
Iryna Vereshchuk had said earlier that Ukraine would try again to
evacuate women, children and the elderly from the city — pivotal to Russia’s
war plans, and which the Kremlin claims to have “liberated”.
Ukraine says
hundreds of its forces and civilians are holed up inside a sprawling steel
plant in Mariupol, and Kyiv has repeatedly called for a ceasefire to allow
civilians to exit safely.
But on Saturday
a Ukrainian presidential adviser, Oleksiy Arestovich, said Russian forces had
resumed air strikes on the factory.
Six dead in Odessa
“Our defenders hold on regardless of the very difficult situation and
even carry out counter raids,” he said.
Further west,
Russia said it had targeted a major depot stocking foreign weapons near Odessa
on the Black Sea coast.
“Russian armed
forces today disabled with high-precision and long-range missiles a logistics
terminal at the military airfield near Odessa where a large batch of foreign
weapons delivered by the
United States and European countries were stored,” the
Russian defense ministry said in a statement.
Another strike
on Odessa killed six people, including a three-month-old baby, Ukrainian
officials said, upending the relative calm the city has enjoyed since the
beginning of the war.
The country’s
emergency services said a missile struck a 15-storey residential building,
sparking a fire that took 90 minutes to extinguish.
Odessa city hall
said eight people were admitted to hospital.
The governor of
Ukraine’s eastern
Kharkiv region, Oleg Sinegubov, said on Telegram that
Ukranian forces had retaken three villages near the Russian border after
“fierce battles” in which two people had been killed.
‘Evacuate if you
can’
In nearby Lugansk, governor
Sergiy Gaiday said shelling was “round the
clock” and urged people near the front to “evacuate if you have the chance”.
The latest
fighting comes a day after a senior Russian military officer said “the second
phase of the special operation” had begun.
“One of the
tasks of the Russian army is to establish full control over the Donbas and
southern Ukraine,” Major General Rustam Minnekaev said.
Russian forces,
which withdrew from around Kyiv and the north of Ukraine after being frustrated
in their attempts to take the capital, already occupy much of the eastern
Donbas region and the south.
Minnekaev said
the focus was to “provide a land corridor to Crimea,” which Russia annexed in
2014, and towards a breakaway pro-Russian region of Moldova, Transnistria,
where the general claimed Russian-speaking people were “being oppressed”.
Ukrainian
authorities have vowed to fight on and drive the Russian troops from their
land, but they also sought an Easter pause.
“Unfortunately,
Russia rejected the proposal to establish an Easter truce,” Zelensky said
earlier this week.
‘End badly’
Ukrainian authorities urged those celebrating
Orthodox Easter to follow
religious services online and to respect curfews in place across the country.
“Support the
defenders of Ukraine and stay at home for our security and yours,” said Kyrylo
Timoshenko from the president’s office.
Roman Starovoit,
the governor of Russia’s region of
Kursk, which borders Ukraine, said on
Telegram that a Russian border post had been hit by Ukranian mortar fire,
although there were no casualties.
Near the
frontlines in eastern Ukraine, the hamlet of Lysychansk has largely turned into
a ghost town but a small market is still operating, providing food and other
supplies after the town’s other market was bombed.
“This is going
to end badly,” said an elderly woman in line for vegetables, fearing a targeted
strike by Russian forces similar to a deadly train station rocket attack in the
nearby town of Kramatorsk on April 8 that killed at least 52 people.
Russia’s change
of strategic focus to southern and eastern Ukraine saw invading forces leave
behind a trail of indiscriminate destruction and civilian bodies around Kyiv,
including in the commuter town of Bucha.
A
United Nations mission to Bucha documented “the unlawful killing, including by summary
execution, of some 50 civilians there”, the UN’s Office of the High
Commissioner for Human Rights said.
Russian forces had
“indiscriminately shelled and bombed populated areas, killing civilians and
wrecking hospitals, schools and other civilian infrastructure, actions that may
amount to war crimes”.
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