Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said Russian forces are blockading Ukraine’s largest cities to create a “humanitarian catastrophe” with the aim of persuading Ukrainians to cooperate with them.
He said Russians are preventing supplies from reaching surrounded cities in the centre and south east of the country.
“This is a totally deliberate tactic,” Mr Zelensky said in his night-time video address to the nation, filmed outside in Kyiv, with the presidential office in the lamplight behind him.
He said more than 9,000 people were able to leave besieged Mariupol in the past day, and in all more than 180,000 people have been able to flee to safety through humanitarian corridors.
He again appealed to Russian President Vladimir Putin to hold talks with him directly. “It’s time to meet, time to speak,” he said. “I want to be heard by everyone, especially in Moscow.”
He noted that the 200,000 people who Mr Putin gathered in and around a Moscow stadium on Friday for a flag-waving rally was about the same number of Russian troops sent into Ukraine three weeks ago.
Mr Zelensky then asked his audience to picture the stadium filled with the thousands of Russians who have been killed, wounded or maimed in the fighting.
His comments came as Ukrainian and Russian forces fight for the Azovstal steel plant, one of the biggest in Europe, in Mariupol.
Vadym Denysenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister, said: “Now there is a fight for Azovstal. I can say that we have lost this economic giant.
“In fact, one of the largest metallurgical plants in Europe is actually being destroyed.”
