The situation in the strategic port of Mariupol is “inhuman”, declared Saturday evening April 16 the Ukrainian president, calling on the West to provide “immediately” the heavy weapons which he has been asking for several weeks, while Russia claims to control almost the whole of the city and launches a new appeal to its last defenders to lay down their arms.
No humanitarian corridor to evacuate civilians will also be set up this Sunday, for lack of agreement between Moscow and kyiv. “This morning, we failed to negotiate a ceasefire on evacuation routes with the occupiers. That is why, unfortunately, we are not going to open humanitarian corridors today,” he said. Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said on Telegram.
- Mariupol: Moscow calls on Ukrainian fighters to surrender
“The situation in Mariupol remains as serious as it can be. Simply inhuman,” Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video message. “That’s what the Russian Federation did. Did it deliberately. (…) Russia is deliberately trying to destroy anyone in Mariupol,” in southeastern Ukraine. According to him, there are only “two options”: “Either the partners provide Ukraine with all the necessary heavy weapons, the planes and, without any exaggeration, immediately” to “reduce the pressure on Mariupol and lift the siege”. of this city inhabited by 441,000 people before the invasion on February 24. “Either the path of negotiation, in which the role of partners should also be decisive”, continued the Ukrainian president, saying that the search for a “military or diplomatic” solution had been a “daily” activity since the beginning of the blockade but proved “extremely difficult”.
Remarks published when the Russian Ministry of Defense asked the last Ukrainian fighters entrenched in the Azovstal metallurgical complex to stop fighting this Sunday at 6 a.m. Moscow time, and to evacuate the premises before 1 p.m. “All those who have given up their arms will be guaranteed to have their lives saved,” the ministry assured on Telegram. “It’s their only chance.” Apart from this pocket of resistance, “the entire territory of the city of Mariupol has been cleared of militants from the Nazi Azov formation, foreign mercenaries and Ukrainian soldiers”, he said.
In the early morning of Sunday, the Ukrainian general staff indicated that airstrikes had been carried out on the city by the Russians from the regions of Donetsk and Tavriya. The capture of this city would be an important victory for the Russians because it would allow them to consolidate their coastal territorial gains along the Sea of Azov by linking the Donbass region, partly controlled by their supporters, to the Crimea that Moscow has annexed in 2014.
- Starving residents of Mariupol
Volodymyr Zelensky has threatened to halt peace talks with Moscow if the last Ukrainian soldiers in Mariupol are “eliminated”. “There is no food, no water, no medicine,” he got carried away with the media, accusing the Russians of “refusing” the establishment of humanitarian corridors. According to the executive director of the World Food Program David Beasley, more than 100,000 civilians are on the brink of starvation in Mariupol, also lacking water and a source of heating.
In terms of human toll, “Marioupol, it can be ten times Borodianka”, a locality located not far from kyiv destroyed after being pounded and the scene of alleged abuses during its occupation, hammered the Ukrainian president.
- Russian reprisals against military factories
A Russian strike on Friday April 15 hit a complex in the kyiv region producing Neptune missiles. And on Saturday one person was killed and “several” had to be hospitalized following a strike against an industrial complex in the Darnytsky district, on the outskirts of kyiv, which notably manufactures tanks.
Russia for its part claimed that “production buildings of an arms factory in kyiv” had been destroyed. Russian forces also shelled an oil refinery in eastern Ukraine on Saturday, four kilometers from Lysychansk, very close to the front line, local authorities said.
- Zelensky calls on the world to ‘prepare’ for Russia’s use of nuclear weapons
Ukraine also claimed to have destroyed on Saturday morning four cruise missiles fired by Russian planes that took off from neighboring Belarus in the Lviv region in the West. In the southern Ukrainian region of Odessa, “the Russian anti-aircraft defense shot down a Ukrainian military transport plane, delivering a large batch of weapons supplied to Ukraine by Western countries”, for its part affirmed on Saturday the Russian Defense Ministry.
Volodymyr Zelensky again called on the world on Saturday to “prepare” for Russia’s possible use of its nuclear weapons. “We need medicine (against radiation), air-raid shelters,” he said. According to him, around 2,500 to 3,000 Ukrainian soldiers have died and around 10,000 have been injured since the start of the war.
During a telephone exchange with the Chief of the American Armed Forces Mark Milley, his Ukrainian counterpart Valery Zaluzhny insisted – echoing calls from Volodymyr Zelensky – on the urgent need for arms and ammunition. But, according to the washington postRussia sent an official complaint to the United States this week warning the American government of “unforeseeable consequences” if its military assistance to Ukraine continues to increase.