Ukraine on Saturday called on China, Moscow’s strategic ally, to end up “condemning Russian barbarism”, after new strikes that left dozens dead.
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In the west of the country, the Russian Ministry of Defense claimed to have used brand new “Kinjal” hypersonic missiles, touted by Vladimir Putin, the day before to destroy an underground weapons warehouse.
“Ukraine has unfortunately become a testing ground for the entire Russian missile arsenal,” Ukrainian air force spokesman Yuri Ignat told the Ukrainska Pravda website.
He confirmed to AFP the strikes on depots, which resulted in “detonations of ammunition”. Another military spokesman, Oleksandr Motouzyanyk, told Interfax that an investigation was underway into the type of weapon used.
In the south, a barracks was totally devastated by a strike in Mykolaiv.
The Russians “cowardly carried out missile strikes against sleeping soldiers. A rescue operation is still ongoing,” Mykolaiv regional governor Vitaly Kim said in a video posted on Facebook on Saturday.
A soldier on the spot, Evguéniï, assured AFP journalists that some 200 young soldiers were quartered in this barracks. Dozens were killed, said another, without giving his name.
According to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, Russian troops, whose progress on the ground was much more difficult than expected in the face of fierce Ukrainian resistance, have carried out 291 missile strikes and 1,403 air raids since the start of the invasion on February 24.
In Zaporijjia (west of Kyiv), the spokesman for the regional administration, Ivan Arefiev, indicated that a bombardment on Friday had left nine dead and 17 injured. Seven people were also killed and five injured by Russian mortar fire in Makariv, about fifty kilometers west of Kyiv, according to the regional police.
The bombardments have not ceased either in Kyiv, the capital and in Kharkiv, a large Russian-speaking city in the northwest, where at least 500 people have been killed since the start of the war.
In Mariupol, a port city in the south-east, surrounded and bombarded with its inhabitants for several weeks, Kyiv admitted having lost access to the Sea of Azov.
The Russian army said on Friday that it had managed to enter the city and fight there.
According to an adviser to the Ukrainian Ministry of the Interior, Vadym Denysenko, quoted by the Interfax-Ukraine agency, the situation there is “catastrophic”.
The results of Wednesday’s bombardment of a theater where more than a thousand people – mainly “women, children and the elderly” according to the town hall – had taken refuge in an underground shelter, which Kyiv accuses Moscow of having hit ” knowingly,” was still unknown on Saturday.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said more than 130 people had been rescued from the rubble, some with “serious injuries”, but operations continued under shelling to rescue others.
Fleeing the “hell” of Mariupol, families recounted the corpses lying on the streets for days, hunger, thirst and the biting cold of nights spent in cellars with sub-zero temperatures.
Faced with the continuation of deadly bombardments, and negotiations that drag on, President Zelensky urged China, a strategic ally of Moscow, a permanent member of the UN Security Council and one of the great absentees, with India , from the chorus of condemnations and sanctions that fell on Moscow, to take a stand.
“China can be an important part of the global security system if it makes the right decision to support the coalition of civilized countries and condemn Russian barbarism,” tweeted Mykhaïlo Podoliak, an adviser to Mr. Zelensky and one of the participants in the meetings. negotiations with Russia.
Ukraine and the United States are worried about possible military aid from China to Russia or seeing Beijing help Moscow circumvent Western sanctions.
US President Joe Biden spoke for almost two hours via videoconference with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping on Friday, to explain to him “the consequences if China provides material support to Russia while it carries out a brutal attack against the Ukrainian cities and civilians,” according to the White House.
But Mr Xi maintained the ambiguity, stressing that military conflicts were ‘in nobody’s interest’ and that ‘the Ukraine crisis (was) not something we wanted to see’, according to Chinese TV. .
President Zelensky for his part underlined that “negotiations on peace and security for Ukraine are the only chance for Russia to minimize the damage caused by its own mistakes”, in a video posted on Facebook, filmed from night in a deserted street.
“Otherwise, he warned, the losses for Russia will be such that it will take several generations to recover from them”.
Several rounds of negotiations between Kyiv and Moscow have taken place since February 24. The fourth opened on Monday at the level of delegations negotiating by videoconference.
The head of the Russian delegation said on Friday evening that he saw a “reconciliation” of positions on the question of a neutral status for Ukraine – like Sweden and Austria – and the demilitarization of the country .
But the Ukrainian negotiator Mikhaïlo Podoliak underlined the “declarations of the Russian side are only their requests for departure”.
“Our position has not changed: ceasefire, withdrawal of (Russian) troops and strong security guarantees with concrete formulas,” he tweeted.
Ukraine refuses a simple status of neutrality and demands “absolute security guarantees”.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, on a mediation mission, said Thursday that the Ukrainian proposal was that of a “collective security agreement” involving the five members of the Security Council as well as Turkey and Germany.
For the head of British diplomacy, however, Liz Truss, these talks are only a “smokescreen” used by the Kremlin before a new offensive. She said in an interview with The Times that she was “very skeptical” about the negotiations.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian made a similar analysis on Thursday, predicting “a dramatic process of long-lasting brutality” on the part of Russia, which according to him only seeks “Ukrainian capitulation” to through “escalating siege warfare”.
According to the Ukrainian president, thanks to the humanitarian corridors established in the country, more than 180,000 Ukrainians have been able to get away from the fighting, including more than 9,000 people fleeing Mariupol.
“But the occupiers continue to block humanitarian aid, especially around sensitive areas. It’s a well-known tactic. (…) It is a war crime”, launched Mr. Zelensky. Russia “will answer for this. 100%,” he insisted.
Since February 24, more than 3.2 million Ukrainians have taken the road to exile, nearly two-thirds of them to Poland, sometimes only a stage before continuing their exodus.
According to a tally as of March 18 by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Ukraine, at least 816 civilians have been killed in Ukraine and more than 1,333 injured. He pointed out that this assessment was probably much lower than the reality.
Humanitarian needs are “increasingly urgent”, with more than 200,000 people without water in the Donetsk region and “serious shortages” of food, water and medicine, Matthew Saltmarsh, doorman Matthew Saltmarsh, said on Friday. -speak at the High Commissioner for Refugees.
Kyiv, the capital, has been emptied of at least half of its 3.5 million inhabitants. According to the town hall, 222 people – including 60 civilians – were killed there.
No overall assessment has been provided at this stage. Mr. Zelensky mentioned on March 12 the death of “about 1,300” Ukrainian servicemen, while Moscow only reported nearly 500 dead in its ranks on March 2.
Ukraine said it had “562 Russian prisoners of war”, and held them in accordance with international law, “like a civilized country”.