Russia Gives Ukraine Deadline To Surrender Mariopol, Ukraine Refuses

WASHINGTON —
Russia has given Ukraine until the early hours of Monday to surrender the besieged city of Mariupol, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he is ready for peace negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

However, a short time later, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Irina Vereshchuk rejected the ultimatum. “There can be no talk of any surrender, laying down of arms. We have already informed the Russian side about this,” she told the news outlet Ukrainian Pravda.

According to a Russian state news agency RIA, Russia’s defense ministry wanted a response from Ukraine’s military by 5 a.m. Moscow time/4 a.m. in Kyiv (0200 GMT). Moscow referred to refusing to surrender as siding with “bandits.”

The ultimatum came hours after Zelenskyy told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria in an interview broadcast Sunday that failure to reach a negotiated agreement with Russia “would mean that this is a third World War.”

Zelenskyy has called for comprehensive peace talks with Moscow that restore the territorial integrity and provide justice for Ukraine. Russia’s lead negotiator has said in recent days the sides have moved closer to agreement on the issue of Ukraine dropping its bid to join NATO and adopting neutral status.

Zelenskyy told CNN that Russian forces entered Ukraine “to exterminate us, to kill us,” but he vowed that Ukraine would not concede its sovereignty or its integrity.

“Russians have killed our children. You cannot reverse the situation anymore. You cannot demand from Ukraine to recognize some territories as independent republics. These compromises are simply wrong,” said Zelenskyy.

Mariupol

A Mariupol art school where about 400 people had found shelter was bombed by Russian forces early Sunday.

Mariupol’s city council said that the building was destroyed in the attack. Information about survivors was not immediately available.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told CBS’s “Face the Nation” that he thinks Russian forces are resorting to these brutal civilian attacks because its military “campaign is stalled.”

“This is really disgusting,” Austin said.

Just a few days earlier a Russian airstrike targeted a theater where hundreds of people had been sheltering. The word “CHILDREN” had been written in Russian in big letters visible from the sky on the ground just outside the theater, to alert Russian forces of who was inside.

More than 100 have been rescued from the theater, and it is still unclear how many casualties and fatalities the attack caused.

The city continues to resist Russian military forces, who are having to engage in attrition tactics and urban fighting that requires going from building to building.

“Mariupol has not yet fallen. It is out of food, fuel, water, everything except for heart. They are still fighting very hard,” retired Gen. David Petraeus told CNN Sunday.

Thousands of residents of Mariupol have been forcibly taken from their homes to Russian territory, according to a Mariupol city council statement on its Telegram channel.

“The occupiers illegally took people from the Livoberezhny district and from the shelter in the sports club building, where more than a thousand people (mostly women and children) were hiding from the constant bombing,” the statement said.

“What the occupiers are doing today is familiar to the older generation, who saw the horrific events of World War II, when the Nazis forcibly captured people,” Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boichenko said.

Russia still stalled

Austin said that Russian forces across the country have been ineffective as Ukrainian forces continue to attrit Russian troops with weapons provided by the U.S. and NATO allies.

“It’s had the effect of him (Putin) moving his forces into a woodchipper,” Austin told CBS.

U.S. officials have estimated that Ukrainians have killed more than 3,000 Russian troops since the invasion began.

At least five of those have been senior Russian officers, according to the Ukrainian government.

Petraeus said Sunday at least four of the five Russian generals’ deaths “are absolutely confirmed,” adding that Ukrainian snipers “have just been picking them off left and right.”

Russian troops have failed to seize control of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, a major objective of the Kremlin, even as the invasion enters its fourth week.

Ukraine’s National Police said in a statement Saturday on Telegram that Russia was attacking the northwestern suburbs of Kyiv, while the regional Kyiv government reported the city of Slavutych, north of Kyiv was “completely isolated.”

Mykolaiv

Meanwhile, officials in Ukraine have yet to release the death toll following a Russian missile attack Friday on a military base where soldiers were sleeping in barracks, now destroyed, in the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv.

One soldier told AFP that 50 bodies have been found, while another said there could be as many as 100 dead under the rubble.

Mykolaiv is located 130 kilometers from the strategic military port of Odesa.

Russia said Saturday that its hypersonic missiles had destroyed an underground depot for missiles and ammunition Friday in Ukraine’s western Ivano-Frankivsk region. Russian news agencies said it was the first time it used the advanced weapons system in Ukraine since it invaded February 24.

U.S Defense Secretary Austin said Sunday he could not confirm or dispute whether Russia had used those types of weapons in Ukraine but added he would not see it as a gamechanger if they had.

A Ukrainian air force representative verified the attack in the Ivano-Frankivsk region, but said Ukraine had no information on the type of missiles used.

Meanwhile, neighboring Slovakia’s defense minister said Sunday that Patriot air defense systems started arriving in Slovakia from NATO partner countries.

The systems will be operated by German and Dutch troops to help reinforce the defense of NATO’s eastern flank, in a move prompted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The United Nations human rights office (OHCHR) reports that at least 902 civilians have been killed and upward of 1,459 have been wounded as of Saturday, while warning the actual count likely is higher. Most of the deaths were from explosions caused by shelling from heavy artillery and multiple missiles and airstrikes, OHCHR said. The Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office said 112 of those killed were children.

Millions of people have fled their homes since the Russian invasion. “The war in Ukraine is so devastating that 10 million have fled — either displaced inside the country, or as refugees abroad,” U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grande tweeted Sunday.

U.N. correspondent Margaret Besheer contributed to this report.

Ukraine says it will never surrender its cities as Odesa reports airstrikes on flats

One soldier told AFP that 50 bodies have been found, while another said there could be as many as 100 dead under the rubble.

Mykolaiv is located 130 kilometers from the strategic military port of Odesa.

Russia said Saturday that its hypersonic missiles had destroyed an underground depot for missiles and ammunition Friday in Ukraine’s western Ivano-Frankivsk region. Russian news agencies said it was the first time it used the advanced weapons system in Ukraine since it invaded February 24.

U.S Defense Secretary Austin said Sunday he could not confirm or dispute whether Russia had used those types of weapons in Ukraine but added he would not see it as a gamechanger if they had.

A Ukrainian air force representative verified the attack in the Ivano-Frankivsk region, but said Ukraine had no information on the type of missiles used.

Meanwhile, neighboring Slovakia’s defense minister said Sunday that Patriot air defense systems started arriving in Slovakia from NATO partner countries.

The systems will be operated by German and Dutch troops to help reinforce the defense of NATO’s eastern flank, in a move prompted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The United Nations human rights office (OHCHR) reports that at least 902 civilians have been killed and upward of 1,459 have been wounded as of Saturday, while warning the actual count likely is higher. Most of the deaths were from explosions caused by shelling from heavy artillery and multiple missiles and airstrikes, OHCHR said. The Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office said 112 of those killed were children.

Millions of people have fled their homes since the Russian invasion. “The war in Ukraine is so devastating that 10 million have fled — either displaced inside the country, or as refugees abroad,” U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grande tweeted Sunday.

U.N. correspondent Margaret Besheer contributed to this report.

Ukraine has said it will never bow to ultimatums to surrender its cities, including devastated Mariupol, as authorities in Odesa accused Russian forces of striking residential areas in their first attack on the vital Black Sea port.

After his government rejected out of hand a 5am Monday deadline to cease fighting for Mariupol, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said the country would no more give up the besieged southern city than it would Kyiv or Kharkiv.

“We have an ultimatum with points in it – ‘Follow it, and then we will end the war,’” Zelenskiy said in an interview with a Ukrainian broadcaster. “Ukraine cannot fulfil that ultimatum.” The country would never accept Russian occupation, he said.

Zelenskiy also said that any peace settlement with Russia would have to be submitted to a referendum in Ukraine. “The people will have to weigh in on certain kinds of compromise,” Zelensky told Suspilne, an internet news site.

Odesa authorities said on Monday that airstrikes had hit apartment blocks in the city’s outskirts, causing no casualties but starting a fire. Overnight shelling in the capital, Kyiv, reduced a large shopping mall to rubble and killed at least eight people.

Ukraine on Monday also turned down an offer from Moscow’s military to open two humanitarian corridors out of Mariupol, one leading eastwards into Russia and the other north to Ukrainian-held territory, in exchange for capitulation.

Ukraine’s deputy prime minister Iryna Vereshchuk said there could be “no question of any surrender, laying down of arms” in the stricken city, another key port, although she added the situation there was “very difficult”.

Ukraine’s defence minister, Oleksii Reznikov, said the “superhuman courage” of Mariupol’s defenders was helping to save “tens of thousands of lives” in other cities such as Kyiv, Dnipro and Odesa.

Hundreds of thousands of increasingly desperate people have been trapped in Mariupol, many without water, heat or power, for three weeks. Officials have said at least 2,300 have died.

Reporters from Reuters who reached Mariupol on Monday described an “apocalyptic wasteland”, with bodies lying by the road in blankets, windows blasted out of charred apartment blocks, and groups of men digging graves by the roadside.

Ivan, 26, who managed to escape with part of his family over the weekend, told the Guardian that describing the city as hell was “putting it mildly”. Electricity, water, gas and mobile signals were cut by 2 March, he said, as missile attacks increased.

He and his family, like the hundreds of thousands of others trapped inside, had to make fires out of wood and grass to cook food on. “At first, we found it really hard to cook,” said Ivan. “But then we learned how to time it quickly. We ate once a day.”

The UN said more than 10 million people, a quarter of Ukraine’s pre-war population, had been displaced by the conflict, including 3.4 million who had fled abroad, mainly to Poland. It also confirmed more than 900 civilian deaths, though the actual figure is sure to be significantly higher.

“The scale of human suffering and forced displacement due to the war far exceeds any worst-case scenario planning,” the director general of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), António Vitorino, said on Monday.

As EU foreign and defence ministers gathered in Brussels to discuss further sanctions against Moscow, authorities in Kyiv said airstrikes in the Podil district had flattened a shopping centre and badly damaged apartment blocks. The mayor, Vitali Klitschko, announced a curfew from Monday night until Wednesday morning.

Ukraine’s prosecutor general said eight people had died in the bombardment on Sunday night. He also said a Russian shell had struck a chemical plant outside the eastern city of Sumy at about 3am on Monday, causing a leak in a 50-tonne tank of ammonia.

A Russian military spokesperson, Igor Konashenkov, claimed the leak was a “planned provocation” by Ukrainian forces, adding that Russian forces had killed 80 foreign and Ukrainian troops in an overnight cruise missile strike on a military training centre in the Rivne region of western Ukraine.

Russian intelligence said hundreds of mines had drifted into the Black Sea from Ukrainian ports, a claim Ukraine dismissed as disinformation. The US, meanwhile, said it could not independently confirm or refute Russian claims that it fired hypersonic missiles at Ukrainian targets at the weekend.

Military experts have warned that Moscow’s forces, denied an early victory, are increasingly turning to the scorched earth tactics of previous offensives in Syria and Chechnya, pulverising population centres with airstrikes and artillery bombardments.

Russia’s ground advance has stalled along most fronts, with its forces held up by highly effective Ukrainian resistance and major logistical problems, so far failing to capture a single major Ukrainian city since the invasion started on 24 February.

Britain’s Ministry of Defence said on Monday that Russia’s assault on Kyiv had largely ground to a halt with the bulk of Russian forces more than 15 miles (25km) from the city centre.

It warned, however, that Kyiv “remains Russia’s primary military objective” and more “indiscriminate shelling of urban areas, widespread destruction, and large numbers of civilian casualties” could follow.

Conditions in some encircled and heavily bombarded cities in the south, such as Mariupol, and east, such as Kharkiv, Sumy and Chernihiv, are atrocious, with whole urban areas destroyed by airstrikes and artillery shells.

The mayor of Kharkiv, Igor Terekhov, said hundreds of buildings, many of them residential, had been destroyed in the country’s second largest city. “It is impossible to say that the worst days are behind us. We are constantly being bombed, there was shelling again overnight,” he said.


Russian attack on Kharkiv kills Holocaust survivor, 96
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Ukrainian officials accused Russian troops of firing on protesters in the southern city of Kherson as they demonstrated against the occupation, posting a video on Twitter showing a man with an armband of the Ukrainian flag wounded by gunfire.

A 96-year-old Holocaust survivor, Boris Romantschenko, was killed in a bomb attack in Kharkiv on Friday. Romantschenko had survived the Buchenwald, Peenemünde, Mittelbau-Dora and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps.

Manolis Androulakis, Greece’s consul general in Mariupol and the last EU diplomat to leave the city, said that what he had seen “I hope no one will ever see. Mariupol will become part of a list of cities that were completely destroyed by war. I don’t need to name them: they are Guernica, Coventry, Aleppo, Grozny, Leningrad.”

Russian airstrikes have hit a theatre in Mariupol where more than 1,000 civilians were thought to be sheltering and an art school sheltering a further 400 people. Zelenskiy said on Monday people were “still under the rubble, and we don’t know how many of them have survived”.