Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky attacked the Kremlin after Russian rockets killed eight civilians in the port city of Odessa as a senior US diplomat prepared to visit Ukraine for the first time since the full-scale invasion of Moscow eight weeks ago.
In heated speeches, Zelensky called the Russians “bloody bastards”, “Nazis” and “racists” – a Ukrainian neologism mixing “Russians” and “fascists” – while urging the Allies to increase arms and ammunition supplies in an attempt to move the war. balance in favor of Ukraine.
Russia has launched new offensives in eastern and southern Ukraine, which the country’s allies predict will lead to some of the fiercest fighting to date. This week, Moscow made it clear that it wanted to occupy not only Ukraine’s eastern region, Donbass, but the entire southern region, extending Russian control of the Black Sea coast to the border with Moldova.
The Ukrainian president said he still supported the diplomatic path to ending the war, but sounded angry at a press conference held deep underground at the capital’s Maidan metro station for security reasons.
“Eight people were killed and 18 to 20 were injured,” Zelenski said of the rocket attack on Saturday. One of the missiles hit a high-rise apartment building. “A three-month-old child died. . . The war started when this child was a month old. . . Try to understand this. Bloody bastards – I have no other words.
The Russian Ministry of Defense claims that its missile strike was aimed at a logistics center in Odessa, which housed foreign weapons. Russian and Ukrainian allegations of war could not be confirmed independently.
Zelensky spoke on the eve of what he said would be a visit by US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken to Kyiv. The Pentagon and the State Department declined to comment.
The United States has significantly expanded the range of heavy weapons it supplies to Ukraine, and Zelensky said he intends to “hold this conversation and talk about the weapons we need.”
“I want the war to end,” Zelensky said when asked about the prospects for resuming peace talks with Russia. “There is a diplomatic path and there is a military path [and] everyone in their right mind would always choose the diplomatic path. ”
However, he said, Ukraine “will not continue negotiations” if the people of Mariupol – where the last Ukrainian troops are being held with civilians in a network of tunnels under the Azovstal steel plant – are killed or if Russian authorities in the occupied southern Kherson region have to organized a separatist referendum.
Zelensky also spoke directly about human rights violations alleged by Ukrainian authorities to have been committed by Russian troops, including the killing, torture and rape of civilians. Satellite images have surfaced this week confirming Mariupol city authorities’ claims that mass graves are being dug.
“They are Nazis,” Zelenski said. “Rashists [Rashists]. The word is new, but the action is the same as it was 80 years ago in Europe.
Zelensky added that about half a million people, including at least 5,000 children, had been deported from various Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine and two Russian-controlled separatist states in eastern Ukraine. In February, the International Criminal Court launched an investigation into alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed since the start of the war.
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The remarks reflect both Ukraine’s growing frustration with Russia’s growing attack and its need to communicate with Moscow on humanitarian issues, including the evacuation of civilians from besieged areas.
Zelensky said Ukraine was ready to offer a “humanitarian solution” to exchange civilians from Mariupol for wounded Russians. “We are also ready to exchange our troops defending Mariupol and we have offered it,” he said.
The Azov Battalion, a right-wing nationalist paramilitary group whose fighters were among troops defending Mariupol, released a video Saturday that was apparently taken in underground shelters there. It showed uniformed, welcoming young children and civilians who said people had been living underground for a month and a half and lacked food and water.
Additional reports by Polina Ivanova in Warsaw and Felicia Schwartz in New York
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