صراط عشق صراط عشق
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday denounced unkept “promises” by the West, saying that the responsibility for the casualties from Russia’s ongoing invasion “rests also on those who were not capable to take a decision in the West for 13 days”.
“It’s been 13 days we’ve been hearing promises, 13 days we’ve been told we’ll be helped in the air, that there will be planes, that they will be delivered to us,” Zelensky said on a video broadcast on Telegram.
“But the responsibility for that rests also on those who were not capable to take a decision in the West for 13 days,” Zelensky added. “On those who have not secured the Ukrainian skies from the Russian assassins.”
As he spoke an airstrike killed at least nine people, including two children, in the Ukrainian city of Sumy, where a humanitarian corridor was to be set up Tuesday, authorities said.
The corridor from Sumy to Poltava is designed to evacuate civilians, including Chinese, Indians and other foreigners, but Ukraine’s vice prime minister accused Russia of planning to disrupt the route.
The airstrike in Sumy, near the Russian border east of the Ukrainian capital Kiev, took place late Monday, Ukraine’s rescue services said.
Sumy, 350 kilometers (218 miles) east of Kiev, has experienced heavy fighting for days, but no other details about the attack were immediately available.
Iryna Vereshchuk, Ukraine’s vice prime minister, said the Russian defense ministry had agreed to start the corridor early Tuesday in a letter to the International Committee of the Red Cross.
“We have information that the Russian side has planned to disrupt the corridors,” she added.
“Manipulations are being prepared to force people to take another route, which is not coordinated and dangerous,” the vice prime minister said.
She said the corridor was also designed to channel the delivery of food and medicine.
She called on Russia to “urgently coordinate” humanitarian corridors from the cities of Volnovakha, Maripuol, Mariupol, as well as from Kiev, Kharkiv and their surrounding regions.
Ukrainian intelligence also claimed that a Russian general has been killed in fighting around Kharkiv, which would make him the second general the Russian army has lost in Ukraine in a week.
The intelligence arm of the
Zelensky Blasts West for Unkept ‘Promises’
Ukrainian defense ministry said Maj Gen Vitaly Gerasimov, chief of staff of the 41st Army, had been killed outside the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, along with other senior officers.
Gerasimov took part in the second Chechen war, the Russian military operation in Syria, and the annexation of Crimea, winning medals from those campaigns.
If confirmed, Gerasimov would be the second Russian general from the 41st Army to die within a week in Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. At the beginning of March, its deputy commander, Major General Andrei Sukhovetsky, was confirmed by Russian media to have been killed.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said he will not send conscripts or reservists to fight in Ukraine and that “professional” soldiers fulfilling “fixed objectives” are leading the war.
More than two million people have now fled Ukraine since Russia launched its full-scale invasion on February 24, according to the latest data from the United Nations on Tuesday.
UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, recorded 2,011,312 refugees on its dedicated website, 276,244 more than the previous count on Monday.
UNICEF, the UN children’s agency, believes hundreds of thousands of them are youngsters.
Authorities and the UN expect the flow to intensify as the Russian army advances deeper into Ukraine, particularly as it approaches the capital, Kiev.
Before Russia invaded, more than 37 million people lived in Ukrainian territory under the control of the central government.
Besides those who have left, an unknown number have been displaced from their homes within the country.
The International Organization for Migration said that 103,000 third-country nationals were among those who have fled.
“There are countless tens of thousands of others who remain in the country stranded,” IOM spokesman Paul Dillon said, citing a mixture of overseas students and people who have been living or working in the country for years.
More than half of those who have fled Ukraine are now in Poland, with UNHCR saying on Monday 1,204,403 refugees were now in the country.
The number swelled by 176,800 in 24 hours.
Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday urged “maximum restraint” over Ukraine, calling the crisis “deeply worrying” in a video summit with his French and German counterparts Emmanuel Macron and Olaf Scholz.
Beijing has refused to condemn the military operation by its close partner Russia, and Xi said he wanted “the two sides to maintain the momentum of negotiations, overcome difficulties and continue the talks to achieve results”, according to state broadcaster CCTV.
“We would like to call for maximum restraint to prevent a large-scale humanitarian crisis,” he said.
Xi added that “the current situation in Ukraine is deeply worrying” and China is “grieved that there is renewed war on the European continent”.
China has also said it will send humanitarian aid to Ukraine.
On Monday, Foreign Minister Wang Yi told reporters that Beijing was open to helping mediate peace — but stressed that the friendship between Beijing and Moscow was still “rock solid”.
