President warns of ‘complete disaster’
Fears assault on Ukraine’s east to increase
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has warned his people retreating Russian forces were creating “a complete disaster” outside the capital as they leave mines across “the whole territory”, including around homes and corpses.
He issued the warning yesterday as the humanitarian crisis in the city of Mariupol deepened, with Russian forces blocking evacuation operations for the second day in a row.
Meanwhile, the Kremlin accused the Ukrainians of launching a helicopter attack on a fuel depot on Russian soil.
Ukraine denied responsibility for the fiery blast, but if Moscow’s claim is confirmed, it would be the war’s first known attack in which Ukrainian aircraft penetrated Russian airspace.
“Certainly, this is not something that can be perceived as creating comfortable conditions for the continuation of the talks,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, five weeks after Moscow began sending upwards of 150,000 of its own troops across Ukraine’s border.
Russia continued withdrawing some of its ground forces from areas around Kyiv after saying this week it would reduce military activity near the Ukrainian capital and the northern city of Chernihiv.
“They are mining the whole territory. They are mining homes, mining equipment, even the bodies of people who were killed,” Zelenskyy said in a video address to the nation.
“There are a lot of trip wires, a lot of other dangers.”
Ukraine’s military said it had retaken 29 settlements in the Kyiv and Chernihiv regions.
Still, Ukraine and its allies warned the Kremlin was not de-escalating to promote trust at the bargaining table, as it claimed, but instead resupplying and shifting its troops to the country’s east.
Those movements appear to be preparation for an intensified assault on the mostly Russian-speaking Donbas region in the country’s east, which includes Mariupol.
Zelenskyy did not say anything about the latest round of talks, which took place yesterday by video.
At a round of talks earlier in the week, Ukraine said it would be willing to abandon a bid to join Nato and declare itself neutral — Moscow’s chief demand — in return for security guarantees from other countries.
The invasion has left thousands dead and driven more than four million refugees from Ukraine.
Mariupol, the shattered and besieged southern port city, has seen some of the worst suffering of the war.
Its capture would be a major prize for Russian President Vladimir Putin, giving his country an unbroken land bridge to Crimea, seized from Ukraine in 2014.
Yesterday, the International Committee for the Red Cross said it was unable to carry out an operation to bring civilians out of Mariupol by bus.
City authorities said the Russians were blocking access to the city.
Around 100,000 people are believed to remain in the city, down from a pre-war 430,000. Weeks of Russian bombardment and street fighting have caused severe shortages of water, food, fuel and medicine.
“We are running out of adjectives to describe the horrors that residents in Mariupol have suffered,” Red Cross spokesperson Ewan Watson said.
Elsewhere, at least three Russian ballistic missiles were fired yesterday at the Odesa region on the Black Sea, regional leader Maksim Marchenko said. The Ukrainian military said the Iskander missiles did not hit the critical
infrastructure they targeted.
Odesa is Ukraine’s largest port and the headquarters of its navy.
As for the fuel depot explosion, Russian Defence Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said two Ukrainian helicopter gunships flew in low and attacked the civilian oil storage facility on the outskirts of the city of Belgorod, about 25km from the Ukraine border.