The Ukrainian government early Monday rebuffed a Russian demand to surrender the embattled port city of Mariupol that came as Moscow appears to be shifting its battle plan to compel Kyiv to accept Moscow’s claims to Ukraine’s southern and eastern territory.
Russia made its demand late Sunday as Mikhail Mizintsev, the head of the Defense Ministry’s National Defense Control Center, had said Kyiv must respond to Russia’s offer by 5 a.m. Moscow time on Monday, according to Interfax.
“Ukraine rejects Russia’s demand to surrender Mariupol," the Ukrainian government said via Twitter early Monday. It cited the country’s Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk as saying that turning over the city wasn’t an option and her demanding that Russia give civilians safe passage to exit.
Russia has inflicted a heavy toll on Mariupol, where fighting has reached the streets. Ukrainian officials said an art school where around 400 people had been sheltering was bombed by Russia, trapping people beneath the rubble. Their condition couldn’t be determined. Days earlier a theater in the city was bombed where large numbers of people had sheltered.
Mariupol is a strategic objective for Moscow as it attempts to open an overland corridor to the Russia-annexed region of Crimea and shift the momentum in its three-week-old invasion. Russia has so far failed to take any big Ukrainian cities since the start of its invasion.
The Russian ultimatum came as senior U.S. officials see signs the Kremlin is adopting a new strategy after almost a month of fighting with halting progress while inflicting a heavy humanitarian toll on the country. The new approach, they believe, focuses on securing a “land bridge" between western Russia and the Crimean Peninsula, and expanding Russian control of the Donbas region. Moscow seized both Crimea and the region of Donbas in 2014 from Ukraine. The Kremlin also appears to be trying to force the Ukrainian government to accept neutrality between Russia and the West.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said Sunday that Russia’s military had been deliberately targeting population centers because President Vladimir Putin’s campaign had stalled in the face of an effective Ukrainian defense and counterattack.
“He’s not been able to achieve the goals that he wants to achieve as rapidly as he wants to achieve them," Mr. Austin told CBS News. “It’s had the effect of him moving his forces into a wood chipper."
The seeming tactical shift comes as President Biden is heading to Europe this week for meetings with allies and partners in NATO, the G-7 and European states, including Poland, where they are expected to discuss deterrence efforts, humanitarian relief and the campaign of sanctions against Russia. The White House said Sunday that Mr. Biden wouldn’t be visiting Ukraine, a day after former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko invited him as a show of solidarity.
Russia’s assault on Ukraine has forced more than 10 million people to abandon their homes, the United Nations said, with the scale of the humanitarian disaster showing little sign of easing as Moscow presses its attack with missile strikes and artillery fire. That means almost a quarter of the country’s prewar population has been uprooted, with the U.N. estimating roughly 3.4 million people have left Ukraine since the Russian offensive began Feb. 24.
MINT PREMIUM See All
Premium Mindtree vs Mphasis: Which IT stock is better?
Premium Sensex ends 571 pts lower; Britannia, Tata Consumer, Gr ...
Premium High US inflation doesn't excuse our thrifty covid spending
Premium The other Gandhis who may need to give up leadership
The World Health Organization said the fighting is taking an ever greater toll on Ukraine’s healthcare system. The United Nations agency Monday said it had registered 14 deaths and 36 injuries in attacks on the healthcare system tied to the fighting that began Feb. 24. The nature of the attacks on the healthcare system range from abductions, to heavy weapons, to obstruction of medical professionals, the WHO said as of early Monday.
Russia claimed on Monday to have seized a Ukrainian military command headquarters and taken 61 Ukrainian prisoners of war, and reported a cruise missile attack on an alleged training center for foreign and Ukrainian fighters in the Rivne region of western Ukraine, which it says killed more than 80 Ukrainian and foreign fighters.
Ukraine confirmed the missile attack on the training ground in the Rivne region, while saying the intensity of Russian combat air operations had eased. It also said Russia had shelled Odessa.
The two sides exchanged accusations for damage at a chemical plant in the city of Sumy in eastern Ukraine on Monday morning where an ammonia gas leak was detected.
On Sunday, the governor of the Crimean city of Sevastopol reported that the deputy head of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet was killed in the attack on Mariupol, the latest in a number of high-ranking officers to die in the invasion.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky on Sunday said his country’s military was imposing heavy losses on Russian troops but added, “We are well aware that Russia has just a bottomless human resource and a lot of equipment, missiles and bombs."
The Ukrainian and Russian sides agreed on eight humanitarian corridors for Monday, including some for Mariupol, Ms. Vereshchuk said.
Subscribe to Mint Newsletters
* Enter a valid email
* Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter.
Never miss a story! Stay connected and informed with Mint. Download our App Now!!