Ukraine has offered talks to Russia next to the vast Azovstal metallurgical complex in Mariupol, in the southeast of the country, where Ukrainian fighters and civilians are still holed up in a devastated city largely under Russian control, announced the Ukrainian presidency on Sunday.
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“We have invited the Russians to hold a special session of talks right next to the Azovstal site”, declared during a briefing an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Oleksiï Arestovitch, indicating “waiting for the response” from the delegation Russian.
Earlier in the day, another adviser to the Ukrainian presidency, Mykhaïlo Podoliak, recalled on Twitter that Kyiv demanded “a truce” in Mariupol for the Orthodox Easter celebrated on Sunday, “an immediate humanitarian corridor for civilians” stranded in this city port and “an agreement for special negotiations to exchange military prisoners”.
The huge Azovstal factory is symbolic, because it represents the bitterness of the fighting between the Ukrainian and Russian armies in Mariupol, pounded since the beginning of March by the forces of Moscow and today almost completely destroyed.
Ukrainian fighters are still entrenched there, with little food and ammunition, and “regarding a thousand civilians, women and children” and “hundreds of wounded”, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
His Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin demanded the surrender of these last fighters, asking his army to besiege “the area in such a way that not a single fly will pass”.
Russia says it is aiming for “total control” of southern Ukraine and the eastern region of Donbass, to have a land bridge to Crimea (south) annexed by Moscow in 2014.
Negotiations between Kyiv and Moscow aimed at settling the conflict are “skating”, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Friday, the latest discussions held by videoconference having given rise to no apparent progress.
Last week, Kyiv assured that discussions with Moscow were “extremely difficult”.
