Russia-Ukraine WR: Russian forces are turning their attention east to the Donbass region.
Kramatorsk, Ukraine:
Russia on Monday prepared to capture the strategic city of Mariupol and launch a massive offensive in eastern Ukraine as renewed diplomatic efforts for peace with Moscow gave little hope of de-escalation.
As the war approached the seventh week, Austria’s leader said he had picked up on alleged Russian atrocities as he became the first European leader to meet with President Vladimir Putin since the invasion began.
Ukraine says more than 1,200 bodies have been found in ravaged areas around Kyiv, with officials chasing “500 suspects” including Putin and other top Russian officials.
The state emergency service said seven bodies were found on Monday under the rubble of two multi-storey buildings in Borodienka, Kyiv region, bringing the total to 19.
French investigators arrived in Ukraine to help investigate suspected war crimes, as the European Union earmarked 2.5 million euros ($2.7 million) to the International Criminal Court for future Ukraine cases.
Russia is believed to be trying to annex occupied Crimea and Moscow-backed separatist regions Donetsk and Lugansk in the Donbass and besieged Mariupol, a city of more than 400,000 people.
The 36th Marine Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said on Facebook: “Today will probably be the last battle, as ammunition is running out.”
“It is death for some of us, and imprisonment for the rest,” the brigade said, adding that it was “pushing back” and “besieged” by Russian troops.
Appealing to South Korea’s National Assembly for military aid, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky told lawmakers that Russia “completely destroyed” the city and “burned it to ashes”.
“At least tens of thousands of Mariupol civilians would have been killed,” he said.
Russian forces are turning their attention east to the Donbass region, where Zelensky said Russian troops were preparing for “an even bigger operation”.
‘The Logic of War’
The regional government said the weekend strikes hampered the evacuation of people in and around Kharkiv in the northeast, killing 11 people, including a seven-year-old child.
According to local officials, Russian missiles nearly destroyed the airport of Dnipro, a million industrial city, about 200 kilometers (125 mi) to the south.
Lugansk Governor Sergei Gede said on Friday 57 people were killed in a missile attack on a railway station in the eastern city of Kramatorsk, forcing many to flee.
“You are alive because a Russian shell hasn’t hit your house or basement yet – evacuate, buses are waiting, our military routes are as safe as possible,” he wrote on Telegram.
Russia has denied involvement in carrying out the attack as well as any other war crimes.
The US Department of Defense reported a Russian convoy had been seen heading towards Izium, an hour’s drive north of Kramatorsk, saying it appeared to be a mix of personnel-carriers, armored vehicles and likely artillery.
On the diplomatic front, EU foreign ministers met on Monday to discuss a sixth round of sanctions, over concerns that imposing sanctions on Russian gas and oil imports could reduce their impact.
Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehmer said his meeting with Putin at the Russian leader’s residence outside Moscow was not a “trip of friendship”, adding that he “mentioned serious war crimes in Bucha and other places”.
He said he was “rather pessimistic” about the prospects for diplomacy, describing Putin as “largely entering the logic of war”.
US President Joe Biden held virtual talks with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, just weeks after saying New Delhi was “unstable” in its response to the invasion.
“Where India is in a position to assist, there were talks about mitigating the destabilizing effects of Putin’s war, including on food supplies,” a US official said.
‘Stop a massacre’
European Union’s top diplomat Josep Borrell has said Russia is to blame for the growing global food crisis caused by bombing wheat stocks and preventing ships from carrying grain overseas.
And the WTO separately warned that the war could cut global trade growth by almost half this year.
Despite Kyiv’s allegations of Russian atrocities, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba told US news network NBC on Sunday that he is still ready to hold talks with Moscow.
“If sitting down with the Russians will help me prevent at least one massacre in Buka, or at least another attack such as in Kramatorsk, I have to take advantage of that opportunity,” he said.
Buka – where officials say hundreds were killed, some with their hands tied – has become a symbol of the brutality allegedly committed under Russian occupation.
The UN refugee agency said more than 4.5 million Ukrainian refugees have now fled their country – 90 percent of them are women and children.
At least 183 children have been killed and 342 injured in Ukraine in the 46 days since the Russian invasion, the prosecutor general’s office said on Telegram.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)