Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday called for talks with Vladimir Putin, saying the aftermath of the invasion was “the only chance for Russia to undo the damage done by its mistakes”.
The two sides are currently in talks at a distance, but so far, as in the previous round, they have made little progress. No one has been at the level of the President.
“It’s time to meet, talk, renew territorial integrity and fairness for Ukraine,” Zelensky said in a video posted on Facebook. “I want everyone to listen to me, especially in Moscow.”
“Otherwise, the loss of Russia will be such, that many generations will not recover.”
There have been several rounds of talks between Kyiv and Moscow, both personally and virtually, since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February.
The latest set of talks, the fourth, opened on Monday.
Russia’s top negotiator said on Friday that Moscow and Kyiv had “brought as much as possible” their position on Ukraine’s proposal to become a neutral state.
But Zelensky’s adviser, Mikhailo Podolik, who participated in the talks, said his country’s position was not shaken.
“Conversation status. The statements of the Russian side are only posts requesting them,” he wrote on Twitter.
“All the statements are intended to incite tension in the media. Our position remains unchanged. Strong security guarantee with ceasefire, withdrawal and solid formula.
Russia, which has been conducting a military operation in Ukraine since February 24, has requested that its neighbor never join the Western NATO military alliance, as well as calling for its “demilitarization” and “demilitarization”.
Zelensky noted that the 200,000 people Putin gathered in and around Moscow Stadium on Friday for a flag-waving rally was about the number of Russian troops sent to Ukraine three weeks earlier.
Russian President Vladimir Putin delivers a speech at a concert marking the eighth anniversary of Russia’s annexation of Crimea at Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow on March 18, 2022. – The banners read “For a world without Nazism” (top) and “For Russia”. , (Photo by Sergei Gunayev / Pool / AFP)
Zelensky asked his spectators to watch the stadium filled with thousands of Russians who were killed, wounded or maimed in the fighting.
Zelensky said the Russian military was blocking Ukraine’s largest cities to create a “humanitarian catastrophe”, aimed at persuading Ukrainians to cooperate with them.
He said the Russians were blocking supplies from reaching the country’s center and besieged cities in the southeast.
“It’s a completely deliberate tactic,” Zelensky said in his nightly video address to the nation, filmed outside in Kyiv, with the presidential office in lamplight behind him.
He said more than 9,000 people were able to leave the besieged Mariupol in the past day, and more than 180,000 in all managed to escape to safety through humanitarian corridors.
Local residents carry water from a food warehouse, in an area controlled by the government of the Donetsk People’s Republic, on the outskirts of Mariupol, Ukraine, Friday, March 18, 2022. (AP Photo/Alexey Alexandrov)
He said there was still no information on the number of people killed in a bombing at a theater in the city that shelters civilians.
He accused Russian forces of blocking aid around hotspot areas, saying “they have a strict order to do everything, so humanitarian devastation in Ukrainian cities has led to the Ukrainian occupiers working together”.
“It’s a war crime!” she added.
His remarks came as fighting broke out in the heart of the Ukrainian city of Mariupol.
Mariupol mayor Vadim Boichenko told the BBC: “They were really active today. Tank and machine-gun fighting continues.”
“Everyone is hiding in the bunkers.”
He said that over 80% of residential buildings have been damaged or destroyed.
“There is no city center left. There is not a small piece of land in the city that does not have signs of war,” he says.
Rescue efforts were underway at the city’s theatre, where hundreds of people are feared trapped.
The city, located at a strategic point between two Russian-controlled regions on the Azov Sea, is placed in the crosshairs of the Kremlin.
Local residents carry water from a food warehouse, in an area controlled by the government of the Donetsk People’s Republic, on the outskirts of Mariupol, Ukraine, Friday, March 18, 2022. (AP Photo/Alexey Alexandrov)
Meanwhile, satellite imagery from Maxar Technologies showed the Russian military building berms around military vehicles and equipment northwest of Kyiv.
British intelligence said earlier on Friday that Russia was adopting a strategy of quitting the war as its plan to quickly take control of Ukraine faltered.
NEW: The Russian military is using earthquakes to hide soldiers and armored vehicles from Ukrainian attacks just a few miles from Kyiv.
Britain’s defense intel agency said this week that Russian forces were trying to reset stalled offenses in an effort to renew.
,@Maxar pic.twitter.com/VASHObfeEr
— Jack Detsch (@JackDetsch) 18 March 2022
Other images show destruction in Ukrainian cities in Mariupol and the evacuation of civilians in cars.
New satellite images from Mariupol show more of the devastation caused by indiscriminate Russian bombing. Fragments of largely broken civilian houses are clearly visible. Cloud cover prevented images of the destroyed drama theater. The third image shows the clearance of the cars. , @Maxar pic.twitter.com/s9Rd0VR8Dy
— Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) 18 March 2022
As Russian troops rained deadly fire on Ukrainian cities, Vladimir Putin was seen waving a giant flag to praise his Russian army.
Addressing a packed Moscow stadium on Friday, Russia’s president said Kremlin troops fought “shoulder to shoulder” and supported each other. “We haven’t had this kind of unity for a long time,” he told the enthusiastic crowd.
The invasion has sparked an explosion of anti-war protests inside Russia, and the rally was met with suspicion that it was a Kremlin-produced display of patriotism. The incident came as Russia suffered greater-than-expected losses on the battlefield and an increasingly authoritarian regime at home.
Police said there were more than 200,000 people in and around Luzhniki Stadium for the Moscow event, which included patriotic songs such as “Made in the USSR”, with the opening lines “Ukraine and Crimea, Belarus and Moldova, this is my country.”
Several Telegram channels criticizing the Kremlin reported that students and employees of state institutions in several regions were ordered by their superiors to attend rallies and concerts to mark the eighth anniversary of Moscow’s annexation of Crimea, which was known as Ukraine. was confiscated from Those reports could not be independently verified.
Russian President Vladimir Putin greets people after his speech on the eighth anniversary of the referendum on the statehood of Crimea and Sevastopol and its reunification with Russia, in Moscow, Russia March 18, 2022. (Ramil Sitdikov/Sputnik Pool Photo via AP)
Trying to portray the war as just, Putin interpreted the Bible to say of Russia’s soldiers: “There is no greater love for your friends than sacrificing your soul.”
Taking to the stage where a sign read “For a world without Nazism”, he raided Ukraine against his enemies with the unsubstantiated claim that they were “neo-Nazis”. Putin insisted that his actions were necessary to stop the “genocide” – an idea explicitly rejected by leaders around the world.
Video feeds of the incident are cut several times, but a loud cheering crowd is visible that chants “Russia!” breaks down into mantras.
Putin’s appearance marked a change from his relative isolation of recent weeks, when he has been shown meeting with world leaders and their staff at extraordinarily long tables or via videoconference.
In the wake of the invasion, the Kremlin has tightened its crackdown on dissent and the flow of information, arresting thousands of anti-protest protesters, banning sites such as Facebook and Twitter, and severely jailing what it considers to be false reporting. has been punished. The war, which Moscow refers to as a “special military operation”.
The rally came as Vladimir Medinsky, who led Russian negotiators in several rounds of talks with Ukraine, said the two sides had moved closer to agreement on Ukraine joining NATO and adopting a neutral position. In remarks made by Russian media, he said that the sides are now “halfway” on the issue of demilitarization of Ukraine.
Mikhailo Podolik, an adviser to Zelensky, portrayed the Russian assessment as “inciting tension in the media”. He tweeted: “Our position remains unchanged. Strong security guarantee with ceasefire, withdrawal and solid formula.
British Chief of Defense Intelligence Lieutenant General Jim Hockenhull warned that after failing to capture key cities in Ukraine, Russian forces were shifting to a “tactic of expulsion”, which would involve “the use of reckless and indiscriminate firepower”, Which would result in higher civilian casualties and a worsening humanitarian crisis.
Anti-tank barriers are deployed at a check point in Maidan Square in Kyiv, Ukraine, Friday, March 18, 2022. Russian forces launched their assault on Ukrainian cities on Friday, launching new missile strikes and shelling on the fringes of the capital Kyiv. The western city of Lviv, as world leaders pushed for an investigation into the Kremlin’s repeated attacks on civilian targets, including schools, hospitals and residential areas. (AP Photo / Rodrigo Abd)
Around Ukraine, hospitals, schools and buildings have been attacked where people sought protection. Human rights commissioner of Ukraine’s parliament, Lyudmila Denisova, said at least 130 people had survived Wednesday’s bombing of the Mariupol Theater.
“But according to our data, in this bomb shelter, there are still more than 1,300 people in these basements,” Denisova told Ukrainian television. “We pray that they all survive, but there is no information about them yet.”
Satellite images Friday from Maxar Technologies showed a long line of cars leaving Mariupol as people tried to evacuate. Zelensky said more than 9,000 people had been able to leave the city in the past day.
There is information about the death of one person in a missile attack near Lviv. Satellite photos show that the strike destroyed a repair hangar and damaged two other buildings. Ukraine said it shot down two of the six missiles in the volley, which had come from the Black Sea.
That morning’s attack was the closest yet to the center of Lviv, which has become a crossroads for people fleeing from other parts of Ukraine and entering to provide aid or join the fighting. The war increased the city’s population to about 200,000.
Early in the morning the barrage also hit a residential building in Kyiv’s Podil neighborhood, killing at least one person, according to emergency services, who said 98 people had been evacuated from the building. Kyiv Mayor Vitaly Klitschko said 19 were wounded in the shelling.
Ukrainian officials said Russian forces opened fire in an area trying to put out a fire in the village of Nataevka in the Zaporizhzhya region, killing a firefighter. Two others were killed in attacks on residential and administrative buildings in the eastern city of Kramatorsk, according to regional governor Pavlo Kirilenko.
Major General Oleksandr Pavlyuk, who is leading the defense of the area around Ukraine’s capital, said his forces were well positioned to defend the city and vowed: “We will never give up. We will fight till the end. Till the last breath and till the last bullet.”