Ukraine says Russia seized relief workers in Mariupol convoy as Kremlin denies invasion has stalled
It has been claimed that Russia has seized rescue workers from a convoy trying to bring food and supplies into the bloodied port city of Mariupol as Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied that the invasion of Ukraine has stalled.
Asked on CNN what Russian President Vladimir Putin has achieved in Ukraine, he said: “Well, first of all not yet. He hasn’t achieved yet.”
But he insisted the military operation was going “strictly in accordance with the plans and purposes that were established beforehand”.
Mr Peskov reiterated that Mr Putin’s main goals were to “get rid of the military potential of Ukraine” and “ensure that Ukraine changes from an anti-Russian centre to a neutral country”.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russian forces not only blocked a humanitarian convoy trying to reach besieged Mariupol with desperately needed supplies on Tuesday, but took captive some of the rescue workers and bus drivers.
Russia has been accused of seizing 15 rescue workers and drivers from a humanitarian convoy trying to get desperately needed food and other supplies into Mariupol.
He said the Russians had agreed to the route ahead of time.
“We are trying to organise stable humanitarian corridors for Mariupol residents, but almost all of our attempts, unfortunately, are foiled by the Russian occupiers, by shelling, or deliberate terror,” Mr Zelenskyy said.
Mr Zelenskyy estimated that 100,000 civilians remained in Mariupol, the scene of some of the war’s worst devastation, as Russia presses a nearly month-old offensive by bombarding cities and towns. Those who made it out described a shattered city.
“They bombed us for the past 20 days,” said 39-year-old Viktoria Totsen, who fled into Poland. “During the last five days, the planes were flying over us every five seconds and dropped bombs everywhere — on residential buildings, kindergartens, art schools, everywhere.”
Mr Zelenskyy, speaking late Tuesday in his nightly video address to his nation, accused Russian forces of blocking the aid convoy despite agreeing to the route ahead of time.
The Red Cross confirmed a humanitarian aid convoy trying to reach the city had not been able to enter.
The convoy’s attempt to deliver assistance came as Russian navy vessels joined in what have been weeks of Russian air and land strikes into Mariupol, U.S. officials said.
A senior US defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity to give the Pentagon’s assessment, said Russian ships in the Sea of Azov added to the shelling of Mariupol. The official said there were about seven Russian ships in that area, including a minesweeper and a couple of landing vessels.
Elsewhere, Russian military forces destroyed a new laboratory at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant that, among other things, works to improve management of radioactive waste, the Ukrainian state agency responsible for the Chernobyl exclusion zone said on Tuesday.
The Russian military seized the decommissioned plant at the beginning of the war. The exclusion zone is the contaminated area around the plant, site of the world’s worst nuclear meltdown in 1986.
The state agency said the laboratory, built at a cost of six million euros (£4.9 million) with support from the European Commission, opened in 2015.
The laboratory contained “highly active samples and samples of radionuclides that are now in the hands of the enemy, which we hope will harm itself and not the civilised world,” the agency said in its statement.
In another worrying development, Ukraine’s nuclear regulatory agency said on Monday that radiation monitors around the plant had stopped working.
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