Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that Ukrainian statehood was in danger and blamed that country’s leaders
Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that Ukrainian statehood was in danger and blamed that country’s leaders
Russian President Vladimir Putin warned on Saturday that Ukrainian statehood was in danger and compared the sanctions to the West on Russia.Declaration of War“While a promised a ceasefire The port city of Mariupol collapsed amid scenes of terror in the besieged city.
With the Kremlin’s rhetoric raging and fighting disengagement relieved, Russian troops continued to lay siege to the cities and the number of Ukrainians forced from their country increased to 1.4 million.
Bereaved mothers mourned the slain children, wounded soldiers were equipped with tourniquets and doctors worked by the lights of their cell phones as sadness and desperation raged. Putin continued to blame the Ukrainian leadership entirely for this and criticized their resistance to the invasion.
“If they continue to do what they are doing, they are questioning the future of the Ukrainian state,” he said. “And if it does, it will be entirely at their discretion.”
He also hit out at Western sanctions that have crippled Russia’s economy and sent the value of its currency to collapse.
“These sanctions that are being imposed are tantamount to a declaration of war,” he said during a televised meeting with flight attendants of the Russian airline Aeroflot. “But thank God, we haven’t gotten there yet.”
Ten days after the Russian military offensive, the struggle to enforce a temporary ceasefire in Mariupol and the eastern city of Volnovakha showed the fragility of efforts to stop fighting throughout Ukraine.
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Ukrainian officials said Russian artillery fire and airstrikes had prevented residents from leaving before the agreed-upon evacuation. Putin accused Ukraine of foiling the effort.
According to David Arkhamia, a member of the Ukrainian delegation, the third round of talks between Russia and Ukraine will take place on Monday. He did not provide any additional details, including where they would be.
Previous meetings took place in Belarus and led to a failed cease-fire agreement to create humanitarian corridors for the evacuation of children, women and older people from besieged cities, where pharmacies are running bare, providing food and water to hundreds of thousands. are facing shortages, and the injured are succumbing to their wounds.
In comments made on Ukrainian television, Mariupol Mayor Vadim Boychenko said thousands of residents had gathered for a safe exit from the city when the shelling began on Saturday.
“We value the life of every Mariupol resident and we cannot risk it, so we stopped the evacuation,” he said.
The West has widely supported Ukraine, offering aid and weapons, and imposing heavy sanctions on Russia. But the fight is left to the Ukrainians themselves, who have expressed a mixture of courageous resolve and despair.
“Ukraine is bleeding,” Foreign Minister Dmitro Kuleba said in a video released on Saturday, “but Ukraine has not fallen.”
Russian forces advanced on Saturday into a third nuclear power plant, which had already taken control of two of the four in the country. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky appealed to US lawmakers for additional help, while he insisted the enemy was being defeated.
“We are harming people they could not see in their worst nightmares,” the Ukrainian leader said.
Russian troops this week captured the southern port city of Kherson. Zelensky said on Saturday that although he had surrounded Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, Chernihiv and Sumy, Ukrainian forces had managed to take control of major cities in central and southeastern Ukraine.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Poland to meet with the prime minister and foreign minister a day after attending a NATO meeting in Brussels, in which the coalition pledged to increase support for eastern flank members.
In Moscow, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett met with Putin in the Kremlin. Israel maintains good relations with both Russia and Ukraine, and Bennett has offered to act as a mediator in the conflict, but no details of Saturday’s meeting were revealed.
In the wake of Western sanctions, Russia’s leading state-owned airline Aeroflot announced that it plans to stop all international flights except Belarus from Tuesday.
The death toll in the conflict was difficult to measure, but certainly exceeded 1,000.
The UN human rights office said at least 351 civilians have been confirmed dead since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, but the true number may be much higher. The Russian military, which does not provide regular updates on casualties, said on Wednesday that 498 of its soldiers had been killed.
Ukraine’s military is unmatched by Russia’s, but its professional and volunteer forces have fought with fierce tenacity since the invasion. Even in the cities that had fallen under the Russians, there were signs of resistance.
Viewers in Chernihiv watched a Russian military plane fall from the sky and crash, according to a video released Saturday by the Ukrainian government. In Kherson, hundreds of people protested the invasion, waving Ukraine’s blue and yellow flag and shouting, “Go home.”
Zelensky encouraged protests that drew thousands to the streets in Russian-occupied cities.
“Go on the offensive!” he urged. “You must take to the streets! You must fight!”
A huge Russian armored column threatening Ukraine’s capital stands outside Kyiv. Ukraine’s presidential adviser, Oleksey Erestovich, said on Saturday afternoon that the overall military situation on Saturday was calm and that the Russian military had “not taken active action since morning.”
While the shelling in Mariupol showed Russia’s determination to cut Ukraine from access to the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, further damaging the country’s economy, it was Putin who was most aggressive with his comments and warnings. Was given that there would be no fly zone. considered a hostile act.
NATO has said it has no plans to implement such a no-fly zone, which would prevent all unauthorized aircraft from flying over Ukraine. Western officials have said that one of the main reasons is the desire not to extend the war beyond Ukraine.
Zelensky has called for a no-fly zone on his country and warned NATO for refusing to impose one that “all those who die from this day onwards will also die because of you.”
But as the United States and other NATO members send weapons to Kyiv, conflict is already brewing in countries beyond Ukraine’s borders.
As Russia cracks down on independent media reporting on the war, more major international news outlets said they were halting their work there. Putin said nothing warrants the imposition of martial law at this point.
And in a warning of an impending hunger crisis, the United Nations World Food Program has said millions of people inside Ukraine, a major global wheat supplier, will need food aid “immediately”.
Ukraine’s president briefed US senators via video conference on Saturday as Congress considers a request for $10 billion in emergency funding for humanitarian aid and security needs. The United Nations said it would increase its humanitarian operations inside and outside Ukraine and its Security Council has scheduled an open meeting on Monday to discuss the deteriorating humanitarian situation.
There was a crowd of people desperate to escape at Kyiv’s central railway station. “People just want to live,” said one woman Ksenia.
Elsewhere in the capital, in a sign of nerves near the breaking point, two men on a sidewalk froze in their tracks to the sound of a loud bang. It was a garbage truck rolling up a bin.