“By accusing Ukraine of breaking the agreement, Russia is likely seeking to shift responsibility for current and future civilian casualties in the city,” it said.
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In recent days, Ukraine had urged Moscow to create humanitarian corridors to allow children, women and the older adults to flee the fighting.
Elsewhere in the country, Ukrainian forces were holding key cities in central and south-eastern Ukraine, while the Russians were trying to keep Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, Chernihiv and Sumy encircled.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Saturday said Russia was ready for a third round of talks, but he asserted that “the Ukrainian side, the most interested side here, it would seem, is constantly making up various pretexts to delay the beginning of another meeting.”
Diplomatic efforts continued as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Poland to meet with the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister. The meeting came a day after a NATO meeting in Brussels in which the alliance pledged to step up support for eastern flank members, but resisted calls for a no-fly zone.
The Ukrainian army on the outskirts of Sytniaky.Credit:Getty Images
In Moscow, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett was meeting with Putin at the Kremlin. Israel maintains good relations with both Russia and Ukraine, and Bennett has offered to act as an intermediary in the conflict.
In the wake of Western sanctions, Aeroflot, Russia’s flagship state-owned airline, announced that it planned to halt all international flights, with the exception of Belarus.
Death toll rises
At least 351 civilians have been confirmed killed since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, but the true number is probably much higher, the UN human rights office has said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Saturday that 10,000 Russian troops had died in the war, a claim that could not be independently verified.
The Russian military, which doesn’t offer regular updates on casualties, said on Wednesday that 498 of its troops had been killed. That figure also cannot be verified.
Ukraine’s military might is vastly outmatched by Russia’s, but its military and volunteer forces have fought back with fierce tenacity since the invasion. Even in cities that have fallen to the Russians, there were signs of resistance.
Onlookers in Chernihiv cheered as they watched a Russian military plane fall from the sky and crash, according to video released on Saturday by the Ukrainian government. In Kherson, hundreds of people protested against the invasion, shouting, “Go home.”
A vast Russian armoured column threatening Ukraine’s capital remained stalled outside Kyiv. Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovich said the military situation was quieter overall on Saturday and Russian forces “have not taken active actions since the morning.”
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While the shelling in Mariupol showed Russia’s determination to cut Ukraine off from access to the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, further damaging the country’s economy, it was Putin who was most on the offensive with his comments warning that a no-fly zone would be considered a hostile act.
NATO has said it had no plans to implement such a no-fly zone, which would bar all unauthorised aircraft from flying over Ukraine. Western officials have said a main reason is a desire to not widen the war beyond Ukraine.
Zelensky has pleaded for a no-fly zone over his country and lashed out at NATO for refusing to impose one, warning that “all the people who die from this day forward will also die because of you.”
But as the United States and other NATO members send weapons for Kyiv, the conflict is already drawing in countries far beyond Ukraine’s borders.
As Russia cracks down on independent media reporting on the war, more major international news outlets said they were pausing their work there.
A humanitarian crisis
And in a warning of a hunger crisis yet to come, the UN World Food Program has said millions of people inside Ukraine, a major global wheat supplier, will need food aid “immediately.”
The UN Security Council has scheduled an open meeting for Monday on the worsening humanitarian situation. The United Nations estimates that 12 million people in Ukraine and 4 million fleeing to neighbouring countries in the coming months will need humanitarian aid.
Kyiv’s central train station remained crowded with people desperate to flee. “People just want to live,” one woman, Ksenia, said.
Elsewhere in the capital, in a sign of nerves near breaking point, two people on a sidewalk froze in their tracks at the sound of a sharp bang. It was a garbage truck upending a bin.
AP, Reuters
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Safe corridor plan crumbles as Putin warns no-fly zone would be an ‘act of war’
Source: Philippines Alive
