SECURITY COUNCIL TO MEET AT RUSSIA'S REQUEST
MOSCOW WANTS TO DISCUSS ALLEGED U.S. `BIOLOGICAL ACTIVITIES' IN UKRAINE
The United Nations Security Council will convene on Friday at Russia's request, diplomats said, to discuss Moscow's claims, presented without evidence, of U.S. biological activities in Ukraine.
The United States has dismissed Russian claims as “laughable,” warning Moscow may be preparing to use chemical or biological weapons.
With Russian President Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine entering its third week, officials in Mariupol said Russian warplanes again bombed the southern port city where a maternity hospital was pulverized on Wednesday.
Hundreds of thousands of civilians remained trapped, sheltering from Russian air raids and shelling as talks between Ukraine and Russia's foreign ministers made little progress.
Military and civilian casualties are mounting — but no one, not even the United Nations or the Ukrainian government, can provide an accurate count of how many people have been injured or killed.
According to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, at least 549 civilians have been killed and another 957 wounded since Russia invaded on Feb. 24.
It's a figure the office concedes is probably a significant undercount.
In some regions, local officials have announced high civilian death tolls that were not possible to independently verify. In Mariupol, an adviser to the mayor said that 1,300 people have been killed in the city alone and that at least 3,000 more have been injured.
The government, fighting for its survival and also locked in an information war with Russia, has limited access to authoritative information and every incentive to minimize its own losses while emphasizing any victories.
This week, Ukrainian authorities said more than 12,000 Russian soldiers had been killed, a number that could not be independently verified. For its part, Russia has admitted to just 498 deaths and 1,597 wounded.
Moscow also says at least 2,870 Ukrainian troops have been killed and more than 3,500 wounded — figures Ukraine's government disputes.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Ukraine's Dmytro Kuleba met in Turkey in the highest-level talks since Putin ordered the invasion.
Kuleba said afterwards Lavrov had refused to promise to hold fire to allow for aid distribution and the evacuation along humanitarian corridors of civilians.
Lavrov showed no sign of making any concessions, saying the operation was going to plan and repeating Moscow's accusations that Ukraine posed a threat to Russia, which wants Kyiv to drop any aspirations of joining the NATO alliance.
A ceasefire was not meant to be on the agenda at Thursday's talks in Antalya, Lavrov added.
While there was no apparent progress towards a ceasefire, analysts said the fact the ministers were even meeting left a window open for ending the war.
In Washington, Central Intelligence Agency director William Burns said Putin did not appear to have a “sustainable” endgame in Ukraine and might soon try to find a way to end the fighting.
Others, however, cautioned that Putin could still seek to escalate.
“We have moved the dial for the process from zero to at least having the possibility for a discussion. But the indications of troop movements toward Kyiv may indicate that the worst may still be ahead of us,” said Jonathan Eyal at the Royal United Services Institute in London.
Attempts to send aid and evacuation convoys have failed for six days.
Aid agencies say humanitarian help is most urgently needed in Mariupol, where residents are running out of food, water and power. Its capture would allow Russia to link up pro-moscow enclaves in the east and Russian-annexed Crimea to the south.
Russian warplanes targeted convoy routes on Thursday, said Petro Andrushenko, an adviser to Mariupol's mayor.
“They want to absolutely delete our city, delete our people. They want to stop any evacuation,” he told Reuters by phone.
Russia's Defence Ministry later denied having bombed the hospital, accusing Ukraine of a “staged provocation” there.
White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki called the hospital attack “horrific” and “barbaric,” and said Washington was reviewing Russia's actions for possible war crimes.
Lavrov accused Western countries of inflaming the situation by arming Ukraine.
Asked if the conflict could lead to nuclear war, he said: “I don't want to believe, and I do not believe, that a nuclear war could start.”
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's chief economic adviser said Russian forces had destroyed at least $100 billion worth of Ukrainian infrastructure, buildings and other physical assets.
The invasion has also hit the world's economy.
International Monetary Fund Managing director Kristalina Georgieva said the war and the massive sanctions leveraged against Russia have triggered a contraction in global trade and sent food and energy prices sharply higher.
She said she expected mounting pressure on Russia to end the war.