Ally criticises war effort for ‘dragging on’
Belarus’s President Alexander Lukashenko, one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s closest allies, has criticised Russia’s war in Ukraine, saying it has ‘‘dragged on’’ and it is time to resume peace negotiations.
In an interview with the Associated Press, Lukashenko echoed the Kremlin’s characterisation of the war as a ‘‘special operation’’ but hinted that he thought attritional bombardment tactics may be prolonging the fighting.
‘‘I am not immersed in this problem enough to say whether it goes according to plan, like the Russians say, or like I feel it,’’ he said. ‘‘I feel like this operation has dragged on.’’
Putin had expected a swift victory in Ukraine, but his forces have instead encountered tough resistance. He has shifted his focus from capturing Kyiv and toppling the Ukrainian government in days to securing the Donbas region.
Lukashenko also said only he could broker a peace deal, and blamed Ukraine for slowing down negotiations.
Lukashenko has been one of the biggest supporters of Putin’s war, allowing the main invading armies to launch attacks on Ukraine from Belarus. He has also said the Russian invasion diverted Ukrainian plans to invade Belarus.
Since the beginning of the war on February 24, analysts and intelligence experts have said the Belarusian army has been preparing to drive into Ukraine to support its Russian allies. This has not happened, and Lukashenko also used the interview to deny that a snap military exercise this week was a threat to anybody.
Lukashenko also said it would be ‘‘unacceptable’’ to use nuclear weapons, as pro-Kremlin Russian media repeatedly warn of a potential nuclear strike.
Ukrainian fighters battling Russian forces in the tunnels beneath Mariupol’s immense Azovstal steel plant are refusing to surrender in the face of relentless attacks, with the wife of one commander saying they have vowed to ‘‘stand till the end’’.
The battle, in the last Ukrainian stronghold of the strategic port city reduced to ruins by the Russian onslaught, appears increasingly desperate.
‘‘They won’t surrender,’’ Kateryna Prokopenko said after speaking by phone to her husband, a leader of the plant’s defenders. ‘‘They only hope for a miracle.’’
The bloody battle comes amid growing speculation that Putin wants to present the Russian people with a battlefield triumph – or announce an escalation of the war – in time for Victory Day on Monday.
Some 2000 Ukrainian fighters and several hundred civilians are holed up in a maze of tunnels and bunkers beneath the steelworks.
United Nations SecretaryGeneral Antonio Guterres said another attempt to evacuate civilians from Mariupol and the plant was under way yesterday. ‘‘We must continue to do all we can to get people out of these hellscapes.’’
More than 100 civilians were rescued from the steelworks over the weekend, but many previous attempts to open safe corridors from Mariupol have fallen through, with Ukraine blaming shelling and firing by the Russians.
The United States says it shared intelligence with Ukraine about the location of the Russian guided missile cruiser Moskva prior to the strike that sank the warship, an incident that was a highprofile failure for Russia’s military.
An American official said yesterday that Ukraine alone decided to target and sink the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, using its own anti-ship missiles. But given Russia’s attacks on Ukraine’s coastline from the sea, the US had provided ‘‘a range of intelligence’’, including the locations of those ships, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The Biden Administration has ramped up intelligence sharing with Ukraine alongside shipments of arms and missiles to help it repel Russia’s invasion.