“The situation in Mariupol is difficult and perhaps even tragic”

Euskaraz irakurri: Putinek Guterresi: “Mariupolen egoera zaila da eta, baliteke, tragikoa izatea”

Russian President Vladimir Putin admitted today that the situation in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, which has been brutally besieged for weeks by the Russian army, is “tragic” during a meeting with UN Secretary-General António Guterres.

“The situation there is difficult and perhaps even tragic,” Putin said at the Kremlin meeting.

Putin has emphasized that in the telephone conversation with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday, he understood that “military actions are taking place” in Mariupol.

“There are no military actions there. They are over,” he insisted, recalling that nearly 1,300 Ukrainian soldiers have laid down their weapons and surrendered.

He has emphasized that the Steel plant AzovstalThe last bastion of resistance where some 1,000 civilians and an unspecified number of fighters are refugees, is “completely isolated”. “I have given the order not to carry out any offensive action,” he said.

In addition, he stressed that the Russian army has asked the fighters in Azovstal to surrender and recalled that “nothing happened” to the Mariupol soldiers who surrendered.

“It is a crime to retain civilians as human shields, if there are any,” he said.

In turn, Putin has rejected that, as Guterres said, the humanitarian corridors opened by Russia are not working. “They have been misinformed. They are working. More than 100,000 have left Mariúpol with our help. Some 130,000 or 140,000 have left. And they can go where they want,” he said.

From Moscow, the UN Secretary-General travels to Kiev, where on Wednesday will meet Zelensky.

Meeting with Lavrov

Before seeing Putin, António Guterres met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

As Lavrov stated at the press conference after the meeting, Russia says it is ready to cooperate with the UN and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to protect the civilian population in Ukraine

“Our objectives are mainly in the protection of the civilian population, we are interested in this in cooperation with both UN colleagues and ICRC colleagues,” said the head of Russian diplomacy.

According to lavrov, The head of the UN “is perfectly aware of the decisions made public by President Putin on the motives and objectives of the operation carried out by our army together with the militias of Donetsk and Lugansk on Ukrainian soil.”

The Russian president also refused the mediators needed in Ukraine; “To talk about mediators at this stage is premature in my opinion,” he said.

He criticized the behavior of the Ukrainian delegation during the negotiations, recalling that Moscow “is still waiting for Kiev’s response to the settlement proposal it submitted 10-12 days ago”.

He has accused the West of continuing to stuff Ukraine with “huge amounts” of weapons. “Obviously, if this continues, the negotiations will hardly yield any results,” he warned.

Guterres responded by denouncing the “invasion” and “the violation of the territorial integrity” of Ukraine by the Russian army and has called for an independent investigation on “possible war crimes”.

The head of the United Nations has emphasized that the secretariat of the multilateral organization does not have the power to investigate allegations of violations of international law in Ukraine, but that there are appropriate institutions for this, such as the International Criminal Court and various mechanisms in the human rights system. .