Ukraine: What happened today, Friday, April 29
Emergency services are working in the area following an explosion in Kyiv, Ukraine. Picture: AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Friday there was a high risk that peace talks with Moscow would end and US lawmakers pledged to move fast on a plan to send as much as $33 billion to help Kyiv keep fighting Russia's assault.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres had said during a visit to Kyiv on Thursday that intense discussions were underway to evacuate civilians from the steel works in Mariupol, which is under heavy Russian attack as part of an offensive in the south and east.
Zelenskyy's office had said an operation was planned to get civilians out of the plant on Friday but there was no sign of an evacuation as dusk fell.
He later expressed pessimism over the prospect of continued peace talks with Russia, blaming public anger with what he said were atrocities by Russian troops.
"People (Ukrainians) want to kill them. When that kind of attitude exists, it's hard to talk about things," Interfax quoted him as telling Polish journalists.
The United Nations doggedly sought to broker an evacuation of civilians from the increasingly hellish ruins of Mariupol on Friday, while Ukraine accused Russia of showing its contempt for the world organization by bombing Kyiv while the UN leader was visiting the capital.
The mayor of Mariupol said the situation inside the steel plant that has become the southern port city’s last stronghold is dire, and citizens are “begging to get saved".Â
Mayor Vadym Boichenko added: “There, it’s not a matter of days. It’s a matter of hours.”Â
Ukraine’s forces, meanwhile, fought to hold off Russian attempts to advance in the south and east, where the Kremlin is seeking to capture the country’s industrial Donbas region. Artillery fire, sirens and explosions could be heard in some cities.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov appears to have dismissed the need for the United Nations to help secure humanitarian corridors out of Ukraine’s besieged cities, striking a tough line a day after the UN chief toured war-wracked Kyiv with that very aim.
As an interviewer at Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya TV tried to ask Lavrov about UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ proposals for humanitarian assistance and evacuation of civilians, Lavrov cut him off.
“There is no need. I know, I know,” an irritated Lavrov said. “There is no need for anybody to provide help to open humanitarian corridors.Â
"There is only one problem … humanitarian corridors are being ignored by Ukrainian ultra-nationals,” he said.
“We appreciate the interest of the secretary-general to be helpful,” he added.Â
“(We have) explained … what is the mechanism for them to monitor how the humanitarian corridors are announced.”Â
Hundreds of people have been evacuated to Kharkiv from the nearby village of Ruska Lozava that had been under Russian occupation for more than a month.
Almost half the village has escaped on buses, in shrapnel-ridden cars or on foot after fierce battles saw Russian troops pushed back and Ukrainian forces take full control of the village, according to the Kharkiv regional governor.
A video posted by the Azov battalion shows troops raising the blue and yellow Ukrainian flag over the government building in the center of the village although fighting continues on the outskirts.
Upon arrival to Kharkiv less than 12 miles (20 kilometers) away, those who fled have described to Associated Press reporters the dire conditions they faced while living in basements with little water and food and no electricity.
“We were hiding in the basement, it was horror. The basement was shaking from the explosions, we were screaming, we were crying and we were praying to god,” said Ludmila Bocharnikova.
The terrible human cost of the war, which has driven more than 11 million Ukrainians from their homes, continues to climb.
In Lyman, a town in Donetsk where Russian forces are reportedly trying to advance as part of their Donbas push, shells rained on Tatiana Maksagory’s home this week, devastating her family.
Ms Maksagory’s 14-year-old grandson, Igor, was declared dead after emergency services drove him to the hospital.
Her daughter was in serious condition and her son-in-law was also killed.
“Grandma, will I live?“ she said Igor asked her when they were in the basement waiting for help.
“I said that he would live.
“But look what happened, I betrayed him.”Â
US-funded broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty said its journalist Vira Hyrych, who lived in one of the buildings hit, died. Her body was found in the rubble on Friday.
Ten people were wounded in the attack, including at least one who lost a leg, according to Ukraine’s emergency services.
In an apparent reference to the same strike, Russia’s defence ministry said on Friday that it had destroyed “production buildings” at the Artem defence factory in Kyiv.
Separately, a 22-year-old former US Marine was killed in what’s the first known death of an American citizen fighting in Ukraine.
Willy Joseph Cancel was killed Monday while working for a military contracting company that sent him to Ukraine, his mother, Rebecca Cabrera, told CNN.
Cancel had recently worked as a corrections officer in Tennessee and had previously served in the Marines from 2017-21, joining the service the same year he graduated from high school.
Cabrera said her son had signed up to work with the private military contractor shortly before fighting began in Ukraine on February 24. She told CNN he agreed to go to Ukraine.
“He wanted to go over because he believed in what Ukraine was fighting for, and he wanted to be a part of it to contain it there so it didn’t come here, and that maybe our American soldiers wouldn’t have to be involved in it,” she said.
Cancel had served as a volunteer firefighter in New York and had a 7-month-old son, according to an online fundraising page set up by a man identifying himself as his father.
Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska, said the war with Russia has not changed her husband but only revealed to the world his determination to prevail and the fact that he is a man you can rely on.
Ms Zelenska, in an interview published on Friday in the Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita, also said she has not seen her husband, 44-year-old Volodymr Zelenskyy, since Russia invaded Ukraine.
When Ms Zelenska woke up on February 24, the day the war began, her husband was already awake and dressed.
He told her simply: “It’s started”, and left for the office in Kyiv, she recalled.
Ms Zelenska said the couple’s two children were with her but she did not disclose their location.
The newspaper, making clear that it interviewed Ms Zelenska remotely, asked her if the war had changed her husband, the former comedic actor who has rallied and united Ukraine as a wartime leader, winning respect worldwide.
“The war has not changed him,” she replied.
“He has always been a man you can rely on.
“A man who will never fail. Who will hold out until the end.
“It’s just that now the whole world has seen what may not have been clear to everyone before.”
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