UNITED NATIONS: UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday denounced Russia’s fresh offensive in eastern Ukraine and called for a four-day truce to mark Orthodox Holy Week.
Russia launched dozens of air strikes across eastern Ukraine overnight, as a new phase of the bloody conflict opened with fighting raging in the Donbas region.
“Instead of a celebration of new life, this Easter coincides with a Russian offensive in eastern Ukraine,” Guterres told reporters.
“The intense concentration of forces and firepower makes this battle inevitably more violent, bloody and destructive,” he said, calling for a “humanitarian pause” from Holy Thursday until Easter Sunday on April 24.
“Easter is a season for renewal, resurrection and hope…. But this year, Holy Week is being observed under the cloud of a war.
“Hundreds of thousands of lives hang in the balance,” the United Nations chief said.
Ukraine’s armed forces confirmed fighting had increased throughout the east, after President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia had kicked off the widely anticipated offensive in the Donbas, Ukraine’s industrial heartland.
Russia’s military campaign refocused on Donbas, which pro-Moscow separatists have partly controlled since 2014, after its efforts to capture the capital Kyiv were thwarted.
Guterres said a truce would allow safe passage for civilians to flee the eastern war zone, and for humanitarian aid to be delivered to the hardest-hit areas.
Meanwhile, fighting between Ukrainian and Russian forces is “ongoing” in the strategic port of Mariupol, the local governor told CNN on Tuesday. “There is fighting ongoing in Mariupol. This is street fighting,” Pavlo Kyrylenko governor of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region said.
Ukrainian forces there are “under heavy bombardment” but “continue to defend Mariupol.”
“There are certain districts where street fighting is continuing. I can’t say the Russians are controlling them,” Kyrylenko said, adding that the fighting was “not just small arms fighting, but also tank fighting.”
It is not possible to verify information given by either side given the scale of the fighting and lack of communications.
Russian forces are believed to have gradually pushed their way into the city, pinning Ukrainian troops down to giant factories near the port, which are equipped with vast underground tunnels.
Russia on Tuesday called on Ukrainian forces in Mariupol to “immediately” lay down their arms in a new ultimatum.
Its defence ministry said Ukrainian forces still holed up inside the devastated city’s main metallurgical plant Azvostal were facing a “catastrophic situation.” “Everyone who lays down their arms will be guaranteed survival,” it said.
Mariupol’s city council said on Monday that hundreds of civilians are also taking shelter in the factory.
“There are at least 1,000 civilians in the underground shelters of the metallurgical plant. Mostly women with children and the elderly,” it said on Telegram.
Russia last week claimed that more than a thousand Ukrainian soldiers had surrendered in Mariupol from a separate factory. According to pro-Russian Ukrainian separatists, several hundred others are still fighting from within the huge Azovstal factory. Thousands of civilians are believed to have been killed in the city, with those escaping speaking of harrowing conditions. – AFP
