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Macron-Putin, Biden-Xi or at the UN, exchanges multiplied on Friday to find a way out of the conflict in Ukraine and reduce its consequences in the world. Good news on the ground: the bombing of the Mariupol theater would not have caused any deaths.
Two days after the bombing of a theater in Mariupol, Volodymyr Zelensky announced that “more than 130 people could be saved. But hundreds of inhabitants are still under the rubble”, he added in a video, even as the Russian army has announced that it is now fighting in the city center of this port on the Sea of Azov, which has been besieged for days.
Mr. Zelensky promised the continuation of relief operations “despite the bombardments” which continue in this city.
The Russian army claimed to have succeeded in entering the city and fighting there, alongside troops from the separatist “republic” of Donetsk. These troops “tighten their grip of encirclement and fight the nationalists in the center of the city”.
Taking Mariupol would be an important turning point in the conflict and would allow Russia to ensure territorial continuity between its forces coming from annexed Crimea and the troops from Donbass.
The town hall of Mariupol reported that the situation was “critical” in the city with “uninterrupted” Russian bombardments and “colossal” destruction. According to initial estimates, around 80% of the city’s housing stock was destroyed.
8 years since the annexation of Crimea
In a new telephone exchange, lasting an hour ten, French President Emmanuel Macron expressed to his counterpart Vladimir Putin his “extreme concern” about the situation in Mariupol. He “once again demanded the immediate respect of a ceasefire” in Ukraine.
The Head of State put on the table “the deterioration of the situation, the continuation of strikes affecting civilians and the non-respect of humanitarian law, while the negotiations between the Russian and Ukrainian delegations have not yet product of progress”, according to the Elysée.
The head of the Russian delegation to the talks with Kyiv announced on Friday that he had noted a “reconciliation” of positions on the question of a neutral status for Ukraine and progress on that of the demilitarization of the country. However, he noted “nuances” about the “security guarantees” demanded by Ukraine, specifying that he could not reveal the details of the negotiations but that the delegations are “halfway” to an agreement on the question.
Ukraine said on Wednesday that “deep contradictions” persisted in the Russian-Ukrainian talks, but that a “compromise” was still possible.
Before his phone call with his French counterpart, Mr. Putin celebrated Friday the eight years of the annexation of Ukrainian Crimea in front of nearly 100,000 people. “For a world without Nazism”, “For Russia”, proclaimed banners deployed in the Luzhniki stadium in Moscow, full to bursting.
Missiles against Lviv
On the ground, Moscow is continuing its offensive, which it is extending to the west where “missiles hit the airport district”, near Lviv, without causing any casualties, wrote on his Facebook account Andriy Sadovy, the mayor of this large city located near the Polish border, hitherto spared from the fighting.
“It’s a strike on the city of Lviv, a humanitarian hub where there are more than 200,000 displaced people” and it shows “that they are fighting not against soldiers but against the population”, affirmed Maksym Kozytsky, the regional governor of Lviv, reporting a slight injury.
The Ukrainian president once again implored Westerners on Thursday to help “stop this war”, when Russian strikes killed at least 27 people in the east of the country.
“A people is being destroyed in Europe,” he said, applauded by the deputies of the German Bundestag to whom he addressed by videoconference.
No precise global assessment was provided even if President Zelensky mentioned on March 12 the death of “about 1300” Ukrainian soldiers, while Moscow only reported nearly 500 dead in its ranks on March 2.
According to the March 16 tally from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Ukraine consulted by AFP, stressing that its figures are probably much lower than the reality, at least 780 civilians – including 58 children – were killed in Ukraine and more than 1250 injured.
Humanitarian
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.
Humanitarian needs in Ukraine are “increasingly urgent”, with more than 200,000 people without water in the Donetsk region alone and “serious shortages” of food, water and medicine in cities like Mariupol or Sumy, UNHCR spokesman Matthew Saltmarsh said on Friday.
Abroad too, the consequences of the war in Ukraine are worrying. US Presidents Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping met for more than two hours. “The Ukraine crisis is not something we wanted to see” happen, Xi said, according to remarks reported by Chinese television.
Major international economic organizations such as the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank said on Friday they were “horrified and deeply concerned” by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, planning to “vast global economic fallout”.
The director of the World Food Program on Friday launched a strong appeal to developed countries not to “neglect” countries, other than Ukraine, which are also in extreme precariousness. “Please don’t neglect the Sahel, please don’t neglect Syria, Jordan, Lebanon. If you do, the consequences will be catastrophic, more than catastrophic,” its director said. David Beasley.