Retreating troops creating a ‘catastrophic’ situation
ZELENSKIY: RUSSIAN FORCES ARE LEAVING MINES ‘EVEN IN THE BODIES OF THOSE KILLED’
RUSSIAN forces pulling back from Ukraine’s capital region are creating a “catastrophic” situation for civilians by leaving mines around homes, abandoned equipment and “even the bodies of those killed”, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has warned.
Ukraine and its western allies reported mounting evidence of Russia withdrawing its forces from around Kyiv and building up troop strength in eastern Ukraine.
Ukrainian fighters reclaimed several areas near the capital after forcing the Russians out or moving in after them, officials said.
The visible shift did not mean the country faced a reprieve from more than five weeks of war or that the more than four million refugees who have fled Ukraine will return soon. Mr Zelensky said he expects departed towns to suffer air strikes and shelling from distance, and for the battle in the east to be intense.
“It’s still not possible to return to normal life, as it used to be, even at the territories that we are taking back after the fighting,” he told the nation in a nightly video message. “We need wait until our land is demined, wait till we are able to assure you that there won’t be new shelling.”
Moscow’s focus on eastern Ukraine also kept the besieged
southern city of Mariupol in the crosshairs. The port city on the Sea of Azoz is located in the mostly Russian-speaking Donbas region, where Russia-backed separatists have fought Ukrainian troops for eight years and military analysts think Russian President Vladimir Putin is seeking to expand control after his forces failed to secure Kyiv and other major cities.
The International Committee of the Red Cross is planning to try to get emergency supplies into Mariupol and to evacuate residents.
The ICRC said it was unable to carry out the operation on Friday because it did not receive assurances the route was safe. City authorities said the Russians blocked access to the city.
Mariupol, which was surrounded by Russian forces a month ago, has been the scene of some of the war’s worst attacks, including on a maternity hospital and a theatre sheltering civilians. Around 100,000 people are believed to remain in the city, down from a pre-war population of 430,000, and they are facing dire shortages of water, food, fuel and medicine.
The city’s capture would give Moscow an unbroken land bridge from Russia to Crimea, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014, but also has taken on symbolic significance during Russia’s invasion, said Volodymyr Fesenko, head of Ukrainian think tank Penta.
“Mariupol has become a symbol of Ukrainian resistance, and without its conquest, Putin cannot sit down at the negotiating table,” he said.
Mr Zelenskiy said he discussed the humanitarian disaster in Mariupol with French President Emmanuel Macron by telephone and with the president of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, during her visit to Kyiv on Friday.
“Europe doesn’t have the right to be silent about what is happening in Mariupol,” Mr Zelenskiy said. “The whole world should respond to this humanitarian catastrophe.”
On the outskirts of Kyiv, signs of fierce fighting were everywhere after the Russian redeployment, with destroyed armoured vehicles from both armies left in streets and fields and scattered military gear covering the ground next to an abandoned Russian tank.
Ukrainian forces recaptured the city of Brovary, 20 kilometres east of the capital, mayor Ihor Sapozhko said in a televised address. Shops were reopening and residents were returning but “still stand ready to defend” their city, he added.
Meanwhile, the former chief prosecutor of United Nations (UN) war crimes tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda has called for an international arrest warrant to be issued for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Putin is a war criminal,” Carla Del Ponte told the Swiss newspaper Le Temps in an interview published yesterday. In interviews given to mark the release of her latest book, the Swiss lawyer who oversaw UN investigations in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia said there were clear war crimes being committed in Ukraine.
“I hoped never to see mass graves again,” she told the newspaper Blick. “These dead people have loved ones who don’t even know what’s become of them. That is unacceptable.”
Other war crimes she identified include attacks on civilians, the destruction of civilian buildings and demolishing of entire villages.