This article was originally published by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and is reprinted with permission.
The first high-level talks between Kyiv and Moscow failed to make progress on humanitarian corridors for civilians or a possible cease-fire as global anger grew over a Russian attack on a maternity hospital near the besieged city of Mariupol that Ukrainian officials say killed at least three people, including a child.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told journalists after the March 10 talks in Turkey that his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, would not commit to a halt in the war so aid could reach hundreds of thousands of civilians, including Kyiv’s main humanitarian priority — evacuating people trapped in Mariupol, where daily missions to rescue noncombatants have failed for almost a week.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has accused Russia of committing a war crime with the attack on the medical facility, which underscored U.S. warnings that the biggest assault on a European state since World War II could become increasingly attritional as Russia’s encounters stronger-than-expected resistance from Ukrainian forces.
The White House has condemned the attack as a “barbaric” use of force against civilians, while British Prime Minister Boris Johnson called it “depraved.”
A defiant Lavrov showed no sign of making any concessions, repeating to reporters that he put forward Russian demands at the meeting that Ukraine be disarmed and accept neutral status.
“I want to repeat that Ukraine has not surrendered, does not surrender, and will not surrender,” Kuleba told reporters after the meeting in the Turkish resort of Antalya.
“We are ready for diplomacy, we are looking for diplomatic solutions, but while they do not exist, we will selflessly defend our land, our people from Russian aggression,” he added.
Despite Kuleba’s call for a “humanitarian corridor,” the Mariupol city council reported more Russian shelling on March 10.
“Bombs are hitting houses,” the council said in an online post. It said that 1,200 inhabitants of Mariupol have been killed during the Russian siege. The Red Cross has said Mariupol, where more than 400,000 people are trapped without humanitarian aid and evacuation corridors, faces “apocalyptic” conditions.
Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych accused Russia of deliberately preventing the evacuation of civilians from Mariupol.
The Kremlin said it would look into the attack on the hospital in Mariupol, but Lavrov claimed that the medical facility in the strategic Black Sea port had been serving as a military base for nationalists, a clear contradiction of Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov’s statement hours earlier that “we don’t have clear information about what happened there.”
The Mariupol hospital attack was not the only one targeting a medical facility; in Zhytomyr, a city of 260,000 some 150 kilometers west of Kyiv, bombs fell on two hospitals, one of them a children’s hospital, Mayor Serhii Sukhomlyn said on Facebook. He said there were no injuries.
The World Health Organization (WHO) says it has documented 18 attacks on medical facilities since the start of its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine on February 24.
Tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians are desperately trying to leave areas under Russian bombardment, which does not seem to be decreasing despite intensive diplomacy and more Western sanctions against Moscow.
Civilians resumed leaving the besieged Ukrainian city of Sumy for a third day through a “humanitarian corridor” on March 10 following an agreement on a local cease-fire, the regional governor said.
Several thousand people have left Sumy this week under agreements with Russia. People were also leaving the nearby settlements of Krasnopillya and Trostyanets, Governor Dmytro Zhyvytskyy said.
Meanwhile, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris is holding talks on the Russian invasion in Warsaw with the Polish leadership on March 10.
The number of people to have fled Ukraine since the start of the Russian invasion continues to grow, with the head of the United Nations’ refugee agency, the UNHCR, estimating on March 9 that the figure has now reached somewhere near 2.2 million people.
Most of them crossed into neighboring Poland, where the border guard service said some 1.43 million Ukrainians arrived as of March 10.
The European Union continued to tighten sanctions on those “implicated in the Russian aggression in Ukraine,” agreeing on new measures targeting another 14 oligarchs, 146 members of Russia’s upper house of parliament, and their families.
The 27-member bloc is due to hold a summit in Versailles, France, on March 10 to discuss the Ukrainian invasion and the energy crisis in triggered in Europe.
