Russian Defense Minister Sergei Choigu said on Tuesday that Moscow was slowing down the offensive in eastern and southern Ukraine to allow the evacuation of civilians in cities that are under fire.
The statement was made on the same day that the American newspaper The New York Times published a report on the shrinking of Russian action in the three months of war, attributed to the initial failure to subdue the capital Kiev and the lack of soldiers, as there was no national mobilization. for the offensive.
“Ceasefires are being declared and humanitarian corridors have been created for older people to be evacuated from besieged locations. This, of course, slows down the pace of the offensive, but it is being done deliberately to avoid casualties among civilians,” Choigu said. to the official Russian news agency RIA-Novosti.
Despite the Russian minister’s speech, Ukrainian authorities accused Russia, also on Tuesday, of the death of at least 14 civilians during attacks in the eastern cities of Donetsk and Lugansk. According to Kiev, troops of President Vladimir Putin used aircraft, rocket launchers, artillery, tanks, mortars and missiles during offensives against targets in both regions.
Donetsk and Lugansk are in the Donbass region, which is occupied by Kremlin-backed separatists and whose control is one of Moscow’s declared goals.
After local authorities urged residents to leave the Donbass region, Lugansk Governor Serhii Haidai changed his speech, indicating that it may be too late to flee the escalating war.
“Right now I will not say: leave. Now I will say: stay in a shelter,” Haidai said on his Telegram channel. “Because such a density of bombing will not allow us to calmly gather people and go get them.”
According to Haidai, Russia has concentrated efforts to encircle the cities of Lisitchansk and Severodonetsk. “Now, with the support of artillery, they are carrying out assault operations in the direction of Tochkivka and Ustinivka,” wrote the governor. In the city of Lugansk, around 15,000 residents are believed to be hiding in shelters.
Last week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that the Russians had turned Donbass into “hell” and that the situation in the region was very serious. On Tuesday, the Ukrainian leader said Putin was the only Russian official he was willing to meet to discuss ending the war.
“I cannot accept any kind of meeting with anyone coming from the Russian Federation except the president,” Zelensky said during a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos. “And only when there is only one issue on the table: stop the war. There is no other reason for any other kind of meeting.”
“If we’re talking about ending this war without him [Putin] personally, that decision cannot be made,” added Zelenski.
For the Ukrainian, dialogue between Kiev and Moscow is becoming more difficult in light of what he calls evidence of Russian actions against civilians under occupation.
In the port city of Mariupol, residents digging through rubble found about 200 decomposing bodies in the basement of a residential building, said Petro Andriuschenko, an adviser to the city council. He, who resides outside the city, now controlled by Russia, said that Moscow troops had left the bodies there and that the smell had bothered residents.
Rounds of negotiations between the Russian and Ukrainian delegations had little practical effect that would signal an end to the conflict. Both sides admit that the dialogue has stalled, and Russian diplomacy accuses Ukraine of acting with ill will.
Amid Russian attacks in Donbass, Ukrainian forces managed on Tuesday to fend off invading troops from the capital Kiev and Kharkiv.
