Ukrainian President Volodmyr Zelenskyy warned Saturday that the “elimination” of Ukrainian soldiers in Russianheld Mariupol would end “any peace talks” with Moscow.
“The elimination of our military, our men [em Mariupol] will end any peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine,” Zelenskyy said in an interview with the website Ukraïnska Pravda, in which he also warned that both sides would find themselves in a “dead end”.
In terms of the death toll, “Mariupol could be ten times that of Borodianka,” a small Ukrainian town near Kyiv that was attacked and destroyed by Russian soldiers, Zelenskyy said.
“How much more [casos como] Borodianka are presented, the more difficult it will be to negotiate,” the Ukrainian President stressed. On April 11, the Ukrainian army announced that it was preparing for “a final battle” in Mariupol on the Azov Sea coast in the southeast of the country.
“It means death for some of us and imprisonment for others,” Ukraine’s 36th Naval Brigade posted on Facebook. The next day, local authorities said fighting had left between 20,000 and 22,000 dead in Mariupol, a strategic city that was home to 441,000 people in peacetime.
The negotiations have been stalled for several days and are “extremely difficult,” said Mykhailo Podoliak, adviser to the Ukrainian Council Presidency, on Tuesday (12). Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the Ukrainian negotiators of a “lack of coherence”.
This Saturday (16th) Zelenskyj said that since the beginning of the war there have been between 2,500 and 3,000 dead in their ranks and around 10,000 wounded. The number of soldiers killed among the invaders is estimated by the Ukrainians at 20,000, but the Russian side has recognized only 1,350 soldiers killed in combat.
On the other hand, the President of Ukraine said in a video message that his country faces the enormous challenge of rebuilding the sites retaken and destroyed by the Russian invaders.
threat of nuclear weapons
The civilian death toll during the war is more difficult to estimate, according to Zelensky, due to the situation in some areas of the country where cities are blocked by Russian invaders.
“It is difficult to estimate the number of civilian deaths, especially in besieged cities like Kherson or Mariupol. We don’t know exactly how many people died in the closed areas,” he said.
The Mariupol city administration estimates that up to 20,000 civilians were killed in this city.
Zelenskyy expressed his fear that Russian President Vladimir Putin would resort to the use of nuclear or chemical weapons because for Putin “the lives of the people of Ukraine have no value”.
“Not only I, but every country in the world should be concerned,” Zelensky said.
“He can use chemical weapons, human lives are worthless to him. We should not think that we need to be afraid, but that we need to be prepared. Ukrainian President.