The evacuation of civilians from the Ukrainian port of Mariupol, besieged by Russian troops, again failed on Sunday, while Ukraine said it feared an offensive on the port city of Odessa, on the Black Sea, despite the intensification diplomatic efforts.
At 11e day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, more than 1.5 million people have already fled the country, according to the UN. Hundreds of civilians have been killed and there are no signs of a calm.
On the contrary, Russia “is preparing to bombard Odessa”, a port of nearly a million inhabitants, accused Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, denouncing a potential “historic crime” against this cosmopolitan city, very close to the border. Moldova where the refugees are flocking.
In the southeast of the country, in Mariupol on the Sea of Azov, “amid devastating scenes of human suffering, a second attempt today to begin evacuating some 200,000 people from the city was halted”, according to a press release from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
This humanitarian corridor was to open at 12:00 local time (10:00 GMT) to allow the evacuation of civilians to the city of Zaporozhye, about three hours away, according to the municipality of Mariupol.
But “the column to evacuate the civilian population could not get out of Mariupol because the Russians regrouped their forces and began to bombard the city”, declared on Facebook Pavlo Kirilenko, Ukrainian governor of the region.
Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the Ukrainian authorities of thwarting humanitarian evacuation operations from Mariupol, a major port in southeastern Ukraine, during a telephone interview on Sunday with his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron.
In this interview, Mr. Putin “drew attention to the fact that Kiev continues not to respect the agreements reached on these humanitarian issues”, adding that “Ukrainian nationalists prevented the evacuation” of Mariupol and Volnovakha on Saturday. , a nearby town, the Kremlin reported.
The other big issue discussed, according to the Kremlin, was international concern over the safety of nuclear facilities in Ukraine, after fighting in recent days near the Chernobyl and Zaporozhye power plants, where a fire broke out.
Mr Putin accused “radicalized Ukrainians” and “saboteurs” of being behind the incidents in Zaporozhye, adding that “attempts to blame Russia are part of a cynical propaganda campaign”.
In the morning, the pro-Russian separatist commander Edouard Bassourin, quoted by the Russian agency TASS, accused the Ukrainian troops of not respecting the temporary ceasefire.
Mariupol is under “humanitarian blockade” with “thousands of wounded” following Russian bombardments, its mayor Vadim Boïtchenko said on Youtube on Saturday evening.
The situation there is “catastrophic”: its 450,000 inhabitants have neither water nor food, neither heating nor electricity, according to Laurent Ligozat, of the NGO Doctors Without Borders (MSF).
The fall of Mariupol would be a turning point in the Russian invasion, launched on February 24.
It would allow the junction between the troops coming from annexed Crimea, which have already taken the key ports of Berdiansk and Kherson, and those from Donbass. These consolidated forces could then move up towards central and northern Ukraine.
Kyiv in sight
In the center of the country, Vinnytsia airport was “completely destroyed” by Russian strikes, according to Mr. Zelensky. In the morning, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced that it had destroyed the Starokonstantinov military airfield, 130 km to the northeast.
Russian soldiers are also closing in on Kiev, where they encounter stubborn resistance.
If the capital was spared in the night from Saturday to Sunday by the bombardments, intense fighting takes place in its periphery, according to the Ukrainian regional administration. “They bomb residential areas – schools, churches, tall buildings, everything,” said Natalia Dydenko, a 58-year-old accountant, who fled Irpin, not far from Kiev.
In Bilogorodka, 25 km west of the capital, Ukrainian soldiers monitor a completely mined bridge, the last one still standing leading to Kiev. “If we see Russians advancing, we will blow it up […] with as many enemy tanks as possible,” one of them told AFP.
According to the Ukrainian administration, the fighting also continues in Cherniguiv, a city 150 km to the north and pounded for several days by the Russian air force, which has become a landscape of devastation.
Moscow had mentioned Wednesday the death of 498 Russian soldiers and 2870 dead on the Ukrainian side. Kiev reported on Sunday more than 11,000 Russian soldiers killed, without revealing its own military losses. Figures impossible to verify independently.
For its part, the UN has confirmed the death of 351 civilians and more than 700 wounded, a toll which is “probably much higher because the verifications are in progress”.
The Ukrainian army has announced a “counter-offensive” by its troops in the Kharkiv region (east), in the sights of Russian troops for several days.
“Any attempt by the enemy to enter” Kharkiv has failed and its military convoys have been “entirely destroyed”, said the mayor of the city, Oleg Synegoubov.
The exodus continues
The crush reigns in the stations of the cities threatened by the Russian army, women and children trying to leave after heartbreaking goodbyes with their husbands and fathers remaining to fight.
“We send our wives and children to Lviv, maybe further, and we stay here […] it’s a horrible situation, ”confided to Dnipro (center) Andrey Kyrytchenko, a 40-year-old mason.
According to the UN, more than 1.5 million people have already taken refuge abroad since the invasion of Ukraine, and more than one million are internally displaced.
This exodus is arousing strong mobilization, especially in neighboring states such as Moldova, where US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was on Sunday, after visiting Poland on Saturday. Washington intends to mobilize 2.75 billion dollars (2.51 billion euros) for this humanitarian crisis.
In addition, the United States is working “very, very actively” on an agreement with Poland to send warplanes to Ukraine, according to Mr. Blinken, while Mr. Zelensky has been calling for them for several years. days.
Diplomatic efforts
On the diplomatic front, Vladimir Putin spoke on Sunday by telephone for 1 hour 45 minutes with his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron, on the initiative of the latter. No details have yet filtered from this conversation.
On Saturday, the Russian president had received Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett for nearly three hours, who had offered to mediate.
“Even if there is little chance of success, […] I see it as a moral duty to try everything, ”said Naftali Bennett on Sunday, who held a telephone discussion the day before with Mr. Zelensky, before going to Berlin to meet German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
And Mr. Putin also spoke on Sunday with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who called for an “urgent general ceasefire” in Ukraine.
According to the Ukrainian authorities, a third round of negotiations with the Russians will take place on Monday, although the chances of an agreement seem slim.
For his part, Vladimir Putin warned on Saturday that he considered “as participation in the armed conflict” the establishment by any country of a no-fly zone over Ukraine.
NATO refuses to do so for the moment, for fear of finding itself drawn into a direct confrontation with Russia.
The Western sanctions, which heavily affect the Russian economic and financial sector, “are akin to a declaration of war”, also affirmed the Russian president.
If it does not comply with its demands, Ukraine could lose its “State status”, he also threatened. Moscow is calling in particular for a “neutral and non-nuclear” status for the country and its demilitarization, which Kiev, which wishes to join the European Union and NATO, considers unacceptable.
Arrests in Russia
Foreign companies continue to leave Russia in droves. Latest: the American bank card giants Visa and Mastercard, which announced on Saturday the suspension of their operations in Russia. Visa and Mastercard cards issued by Russian banks will no longer work abroad, and vice versa.
The PayPal payment system has also suspended its services in Russia.
In Russia, the Central Bank on Sunday asked banks not to publish their financial statements. The ruble collapsed after international sanctions were imposed on Moscow and some of Russia’s biggest banks were cut off from the Swift international interbank system.
The Russian authorities are stepping up all-out measures to curb capital flight and fear the emergence of a black food market.
The airline Aeroflot has announced the suspension of its international flights from March 8. The Russian aviation regulator, Rossaviatsia, has recommended that all companies in the country stop flights abroad in order to avoid the seizure of their aircraft.
Despite an omerta in the Russian media on the war in Ukraine imposed by the authorities, demonstrations are taking place in Russia, leading to the arrest on Sunday of more than 2,500 people in 44 cities, according to the Russian NGO OVD-Info, which reports that more than 10,000 people have been arrested since February 24.
As a sign of support for Ukraine, demonstrations are also multiplying around the world, with tens of thousands of people gathered in European capitals, among others.