Ukraine warned on Monday that the humanitarian crisis in the city of Mariupol was now “devastating”, with fighting escalating around Kyiv ahead of new face-to-face peace talks with Russia in Turkey.
A senior Ukrainian official told AFP on Monday that some 5,000 people were buried in the besieged city of Mariupol.
But the burial was stopped 10 days ago because of constant shelling,” Tetyana Lomakina, the presidential adviser now in charge of the humanitarian corridors, told AFP by phone, adding that more than 10,000 people may have been killed since the start of the Russian offensive. .
Russian strikes near Kyiv cut power to more than 80,000 homes, officials said, underscoring the crisis facing the capital despite Moscow’s clear return to war with a focus on eastern Ukraine.
“The enemy is trying to breach the corridor around Kyiv and block transport routes,” Ukraine’s Deputy Defense Minister Ganna Malayar said.
“The defense of Kyiv continues. It is very serious today,” she said.
“It is extremely difficult for the enemy, but we must be honest about the fact that the enemy is trying to capture Kiev, because capturing Kyiv is essentially a occupied Ukraine, and that is their goal. “
According to Kyiv, nearly 20,000 Ukrainians have been killed in Russia’s months-long invasion and 10 million have fled their homes, and many cities are still reeling under the withered bombings.
Humanitarian needs are highest in the southern port city of Mariupol, where Ukraine says some 160,000 civilians are surrounded by Russian forces desperate for food, water and medicine.
Ukraine’s foreign ministry said the situation there was “devastating” and that Russian attacks from land, sea and air had turned a city home to 450,000 people “into the dust”.
The Ukrainian government also estimated on Monday that the economic damage from the Russian invasion reached about $565 billion.
Economy Minister Yulia Sivrydenko said on Facebook that the $564.9 billion (515.8 billion euro) estimate includes immediate losses and potential losses in trade and economic activity.
Ukraine says a Russian attack on a theater-turned-shelter in Mariupol is feared to have killed at least 300 people.
Local MP Katerina Sukhomlinova said the death toll in the theater due to poor communication is unknown, but the city witnessed horrific scenes before she was able to escape west.
He told AFP that dead bodies buried on roads and residents in basement shelters have been forced to eat ice to stay hydrated.
“People were calling me hysterically, asking me ‘Why aren’t we burying them?’ And I replied, ‘If I take care of the dead, the living that I can help will die’,” said Sukhomlinova.
Deputy Prime Minister Irina Vereshchuk said on Monday that Ukraine decided against any humanitarian corridor because of potential “provocation” on routes designated by the Russians.
France, Greece and Turkey are hoping to begin mass evacuation of citizens from Mariupol within days, according to French President Emmanuel Macron, who is seeking a deal from Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
Macron warned that his evacuation efforts in Poland could be harmed “in words or action” after US President Joe Biden’s shock announcement that Putin “cannot stay in power”.
Biden himself denied to reporters on Sunday that he was calling for regime change, while Britain and Germany joined France to distance themselves from the remarks.
Russia has de facto control over Crimea’s southern peninsula, which it annexed in 2014, and the self-declared republics of Donetsk and Lugansk in the eastern Donbass region.
In the Lugansk city of Rubizan, one person was killed and another was injured in an overnight Russian bombing, according to regional Ukrainian officials.
On Monday, Ukrainian forces recaptured Malaya Rohan, a small village on the outskirts of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city in the northeast.
“There are Russian corpses everywhere,” a Ukrainian soldier told AFP, adding that more than two dozen soldiers sent to Ukraine by Moscow were killed in fighting for the village.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said the first round of in-person talks from March 10 – due to open on Tuesday after almost daily video contacts in Istanbul – should bring peace “without delay”.
Ukrainian “neutrality”, and the future position of the Donbass, may be in the mix for the Istanbul meeting. The Ukrainian delegation said it had been delayed and talks would begin on Tuesday.
Zelensky said, “We understand that it is impossible to liberate all territories by force, it will mean World War III, I fully understand and feel this.”
But he insisted: “The sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine is beyond doubt. Effective security guarantees are imperative for our state.”
Putin called Moscow’s military goals “the demilitarization and demilitarization of Ukraine”, as well as imposing a neutral position.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov rejected Zelensky’s demands to meet in person with Putin, but said: “We are interested in these talks ending with an outcome that will achieve our fundamental goals.”
Russia appeared to be reducing its campaign last week when Senior General Sergei Rudskoy said the first phase of the war was over and the “main goal” was now to control the Donbass in the east.
Western analysts say that Ukraine’s unexpectedly staunch resistance, coupled with military and strategic failures by the Russians, explains any reorientation by Moscow.
The Kremlin is not taking any chances with its domestic opposition to the war. New warnings from Russia’s media regulator on Monday’s crackdown on independent reporting implicated another victim.
The Novaya Gazeta newspaper, whose editor-in-chief Dmitry Muratov was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last year, said it was suspending publication until the end of the invasion.
Many foreign companies are leaving Russia altogether after Western sanctions. European brewers Carlsberg and Heineken joined the exodus on Monday.
Many in Ukraine suspect that Russia may use the talks as an opportunity to regroup its military and fix problems.
“After the failure to capture Kyiv and overthrow the government of Ukraine, Putin is changing his main operational direction,” said intelligence chief Kyrlo Budanov.
“It was now aiming to “put a separation line between the occupied and the occupied territories,” the Ukrainian official said. “This would be an attempt to establish South and North Korea in Ukraine.”
The head of Ukraine’s Lugansk separatist region says he may hold a referendum on becoming part of Russia.
But resistance in the besieged Mariupol is the main obstacle preventing Moscow from gaining unbroken control over the land from the Donbass to the Crimea.
In the southern city of Mykolaiv, under heavy attack for weeks, the bombardment seemed to subside.
It was a welcome relief for locals like 13-year-old Sofia, who suffered shrapnel to her head during a shelling near Mykolaiv in early March.
After three operations she said, “Now I can move my arms and legs a little. I still can’t get up without my mother’s help, but hopefully I can go soon.”
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