Ukraine said on Thursday that Moscow has ignored its request for humanitarian access to save hundreds of thousands of civilians trapped in the crossfire, as the two sides failed to reach an agreement at the highest level since the Russian invasion began.
Thousands of people have been murdered, more than two million have fled the nation, and thousands more are trapped in besieged cities under unrelenting bombardment as Russia’s conflict in Ukraine enters its third week.
Local officials in Mariupol, a Ukrainian port under siege for ten days, said Russian aeroplanes were shelling the city again, a day after demolishing a maternity facility in a war crime denounced by Kyiv and Western allies. The hospital, according to Moscow, is no longer operational and has been overrun by Ukrainian fighters.
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said after meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Turkey that Lavrov refused to promise to hold fire so that aid could reach civilians, including Kyiv’s main humanitarian priority of evacuating hundreds of thousands of people trapped in Mariupol.
“I made a straightforward proposition to Minister Lavrov: I can call my Ukrainian ministers, authorities, and president right now and provide you 100 percent assurances on humanitarian route security,” he stated.
Lavrov made no compromises during his own simultaneous press conference in a separate room, claiming the operation was going according to plan and repeating Russian accusations that Ukraine constituted a threat to Russia.
Kyiv seems to want meetings for the sake of meetings, according to Lavrov, and a ceasefire was not supposed to be on the table for Thursday’s negotiations.
Russia describes its activities as an unique military operation to disarm its neighbour and depose neo-Nazi leaders. Kyiv and its Western supporters argue that this is a spurious excuse for invading a 44-million-strong country.
Humanitarian assistance is critically needed in Mariupol, a metropolis of 400,000 people before the war, where citizens have been imprisoned without food, water, or electricity.
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