UKRAINE rejected a Russian ultimatum to surrender the besieged city of Mariupol Monday, as Russian forces carried out more shelling on the Ukrainian capital Kyiv.
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Irina Vereshchuk rejected the Russian demand and said Russia should open humanitarian corridors for people to be able to leave Mariupol.
“There can be no talk of any surrender, laying down of arms. We have already informed the Russian side about this,” Vereshchuk told the news outlet Ukrainian Pravda.
According to Russian state news agency RIA, Russia’s defense ministry gave Ukraine’s military a pre-dawn deadline Monday and referred to refusing to surrender as siding with “bandits.”
European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell described Russia’s actions in Mariupol as “awful.”
“What’s happening in Mariupol is a massive war crime. Destroying everything, bombarding and killing everybody in an indiscriminate manner,” Borrell said as EU foreign ministers gathered in Brussels.
Shelling overnight hit a shopping center in Kyiv, killing at least eight people, while Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko announced a new curfew until Wednesday morning.
He told The Washington Post on Monday that Russian attacks had destroyed 72 apartment buildings, preschools and schools, injuring nearly 300 people.
A senior U.S. defense official says Russian forces are still about 15 kilometers northwest of Kyiv.
“They haven’t achieved anything in terms of what we assessed to be their objectives, which was population centers, so that they could occupy and take over Ukraine,” the official added, calling recent actions that have targeted civilians a “near-desperate attempt by the Russians to gain some momentum.”
The leaders of the United States, France, Germany, Italy and Britain are holding a call Monday to discuss what the White House called “their coordinated responses to Russia’s unprovoked and unjustified attack on Ukraine.”
The call comes days ahead of a NATO summit, a G-7 meeting, and a European Council summit in Brussels, all focused on the situation in Ukraine. U.S. President Joe Biden will travel to Poland following the meetings.
Ukraine’s allies have continued to supply Ukrainian fighters through ground shipments of weapons, which the senior U.S. defense official said Monday had not been attacked. The official assessed Ukrainians still have more than 90% of their combat power after nearly four weeks of fighting, in part because the U.S. and other allies have replenished them “in real time.”
In an interview broadcast Sunday, Ukrainian President r Zelenskyy told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria that failure to reach a negotiated agreement with Russia “would mean that this is a third World War.”
Zelenskyy has called for comprehensive peace talks with Moscow that restore territorial integrity and provide justice for Ukraine.
Russia’s lead negotiator has said the sides have moved closer to agreement in recent days on the issue of Ukraine dropping its bid to join NATO and adopting neutral status.
But Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Monday there needs to be more progress before Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin could meet to commit to any agreement.
Humanitarian crisis
Millions of people have fled their homes since the Russian invasion.
“The war in Ukraine is so devastating that 10 million have fled — either displaced inside the country, or as refugees abroad,” U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grande tweeted Sunday.
This week, the U.N. General Assembly is expected to resume an “emergency special session” to vote on a draft resolution prepared by France and Mexico demanding an immediate stop to Russia’s hostilities against Ukraine, especially attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure.
The text also demands the full protection of civilians, including humanitarians, medical personnel, journalists and foreign nationals, and of people trying to flee the conflict.
In the besieged city of Mariupol, an art school where about 400 people had found shelter was bombed by Russian forces early Sunday.
Mariupol’s city council said that the building was destroyed in the attack. Information about survivors was not immediately available.
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told CBS’s “Face the Nation” that he thinks Russian forces are resorting to these brutal attacks on civilian because its military “campaign is stalled.”
“This is really disgusting,” Austin said.
Just a few days earlier a Russian airstrike targeted a theater where hundreds of people had been sheltering. The word “CHILDREN” had been written in Russian in big letters visible from the sky on the ground just outside the theater, to alert Russian forces of who was inside.
More than 100 have been rescued from the theater, and it is still unclear how many casualties the attack caused.
The city continues to resist Russian military forces, who are having to engage in attrition tactics and urban fighting that requires going from building to building.
Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb and U.N. correspondent Margaret Besheer contributed to this report.
