Putin tells Ukraine to stop fighting amid ceasefire calls
Agencies | Lviv
The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com
Russian President Vladimir Putin said yesterday his campaign in Ukraine was going according to plan and would not end until Kyiv stopped fighting, as efforts to evacuate the heavily bombarded city of Mariupol failed for the second day in a row.
He made the comments in a phone call with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, who appealed for a ceasefire in the conflict that the United Nations says has created the fastest-growing refugee crisis in Europe since World War Two.
Russian media said Putin also held almost two hours of talks yesterday with French President Emmanuel Macron, who has stayed in regular contact but, as with other international efforts, has yet to persuade Moscow to call off a campaign now on the 11th day.
Authorities in Mariupol had said yesterday they would make a second attempt to evacuate some of the 400,000 residents after the Ukrainian coastal city endured days of shelling that has trapped people without heat, power and water.
But the ceasefire plan collapsed, as it had on Saturday, with each side blaming the other for the failure.
Putin told Erdogan he was ready for dialogue with Ukraine and foreign partners but any attempt to draw out talks would fail, a Kremlin statement said.
Another nuclear plant falls to Russia
Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is now under the command of Russian forces who have cut off some mobile networks and the internet, complicating communications, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said yesterday.
Russian forces have already captured Ukraine’s defunct Chernobyl nuclear power plant early on at the beginning of the invasion and Kyiv’s authorities have reported increased radiation levels from the plant due to military activity causing radioactive dust to rise into the air.
At the time, the IAEA said the radiation at the site did not pose any danger to the public.
“The plant management is now under orders from the commander of the Russian forces that took control of the site last week,” the UN’s nuclear watchdog Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said.
Related Posts