Screenshot of Twitter LCI From a metro station in Kyiv, Volodymyr Zelenskyy again asked to meet Vladimir Putin to end the war.
WAR IN UKRAINE — President Volodymyr Zelenskyy held a press conference from the metro in the Ukrainian capital, where he reiterated his call for a meeting with his Russian counterpart this Saturday, April 23.
While the siege of Mariupol by Russian forces is still focused on the huge metallurgical complex where the last Ukrainian soldiers are taking shelter, Volodymyr Zelenskyy also warned Vladimir Putin about the consequences of a Russian attack on the Azovstal plant. Update on the situation on the 59th day of the war in Ukraine.
- New call from Zelenskyy to Moscow for a meeting with Vladimir Putin
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called again this Saturday to meet his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin “to end the war”.
“I think whoever started this war will be able to end it,” Zelenskyy said at a press conference in a downtown Kyiv metro station, reiterating that “he wasn’t afraid to meet Vladimir Putin” when this would contribute to a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine.
“I insisted on negotiations with the Russian president from the beginning,” he recalled. Before I add: “It’s not that I want to meet him, it’s that I have to meet him in order to resolve this conflict through diplomatic channels”.
Kyiv will break off negotiations with Moscow if its soldiers holed up in the huge Azovstal metallurgical complex in Mariupol, southeast Ukraine, are killed by the Russian army, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Saturday.
“If our men are killed in Mariupol and if pseudo-referendums are organized in the Kherson (South) region, Ukraine will withdraw from any negotiation process,” Volodymyr Zelenskyy said during the same press conference in Kyiv.
A new attempt to evacuate civilians from the surrounded and almost entirely Russian-controlled Mariupol to Zaporizhia has failed, a deputy mayor of Mariupol said on his Telegram account on Saturday.
According to Petro Andryushchenko, about 200 residents of this port and industrial city on the Sea of Azov had started gathering to be evacuated when they were “dispersed” by the Russian army. Some were reportedly forced to board buses bound for Dokoutchaevsk, a Russian-held town 80 km to the north.
“People weren’t allowed to leave the bus,” the deputy mayor complained, specifying that the Russians summoned “the fire of the nationalists (Ukrainians) on the evacuation site” to justify this change of route.
“The Russian Armed Forces today, using long-range high-precision missiles, decommissioned a logistics terminal at the military airfield near Odessa, where a large amount of foreign weapons supplied by the States and European countries were stored,” said the Russian defense that shared that ministry in a statement.
In addition, eight people were killed and at least 18 others injured in Russian attacks on the port city of Odessa in southern Ukraine on Saturday, according to a new report by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
“By that time, eight people had died and 18 or 20 others were injured,” Volodymyr Zelenskyy said during his press conference.
In all, Russian high-precision missiles on Saturday targeted 22 Ukrainian military sites, including three weapons and ammunition depots near Ilichiovka and Kramatorsk, which the ministry said were destroyed.
For its part, the Russian Air Force carried out airstrikes on 79 Ukrainian military bases on Saturday, targeting 16 artillery pieces and fuel depots in particular, according to the same source.
- Antony Blinken’s visit to Kyiv two months after the start of the war
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will visit Kyiv on Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced on Saturday, exactly two months to the day after the start of the Russian invasion.
“Tomorrow, American officials will come to our house: I will meet with Secretary of Defense (Lloyd Austin) and Antony Blinken,” Zelenskyy said during his press conference held at a subway station in Kyiv’s central square. This is the first official visit by US government officials to Ukraine since February 24.
See also on The HuffPost: Mariupol: Ukrainian Azov Regiment releases footage of refugee children in bunker