An aide to the mayor of Mariupol has said the besieged southern Ukrainian city remains closed for anyone trying to enter and is “very dangerous” for anyone trying to leave.
Petro Andryushchenko said Russian forces had since Thursday been preventing even the smallest amount of humanitarian supplies reaching trapped residents, making clear a planned “humanitarian corridor” had not been opened.
“The city remains closed to entry and very dangerous to exit with personal transport,” he said on the Telegram messaging app on Friday. “In addition, since yesterday the occupiers have categorically not allowed any humanitarian aid – even in small quantities – into the city.”
A convoy of buses that set out for Mariupol did not reach the city, Ukrainian officials said on Thursday evening. Russia had promised a limited ceasefire along the route from Mariupol to the Ukraine-held city of Zaporizhzhia.
Repeated efforts to set up humanitarian corridors for the evacuation of up to 170,000 people who remain in Mariupol, which has suffered four weeks of bombardment and dwindling supplies, have failed. Ukraine has accused Russian forces of shelling supposedly safe routes outside of several fighting hotspots, claims that Moscow denies.
In other developments, peace talks were due to resume by video on Friday, the Ukrainian negotiator David Arakhamia said, focusing on the peace framework Kyiv presented during a face-to-face meeting in Istanbul this week that Moscow described as constructive.
Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, further upped the diplomatic stakes, signing a decree requiring foreign buyers to pay in roubles for Russian gas from Friday or have their energy contracts halted – a demand Germany, France and the UK instantly rejected and that Berlin described as blackmail.
The move follows “a personal request from the French president and German chancellor to Russian president Vladimir Putin”, said Russia’s defence ministry.
On Thursday night, Volodymyr Zelenskiy repeated his warning that Russia was preparing for “powerful strikes” in the Donbas region after appearing to withdraw from an assault on Kyiv. The Ukrainian president dismissed the withdrawal of Russian forces near Kyiv, Chernihiv and Sumy as tactical. The Pentagon also said Russia might be repositioning some of its forces to send them to the Donbas.
The UK’s Ministry of Defence said Russia was pulling forces out of Georgia to reinforce its invasion of Ukraine in a move it said was unplanned and “indicative of the unexpected losses it has sustained during the invasion”.
Both the US and UK have suggested Putin is becoming increasingly frustrated, with the US president, Joe Biden, saying Putin “seems to be self-isolated” and noting that “there’s some indication that he has fired or put under house arrest some of his advisers”, without citing evidence.
The White House director of communications, Kate Bedingfield, said the war had been a “strategic disaster” for Russia and it was “working to redefine the initial aims” of the invasion.
The UK defence secretary, Ben Wallace, said Putin was “not the force he used to be” and was “now a man in a cage he built himself”.
Despite the ongoing talks, there is mounting western scepticism about Russia’s intentions in the talks, more than five weeks into its invasion of Ukraine. There has been no real sign of the partial military pullback in northern Ukraine it had promised as a goodwill gesture, suggesting the Kremlin may be playing for time.
Kyiv’s chief negotiator, Mykhailo Podolyak, insisted, however, that the Kremlin was considering Ukraine’s proposals, which included an international treaty under which Ukraine would remain neutral, with its security guaranteed by third countries.
In other developments:
The UN atomic watchdog is investigating Ukrainian claims that Russian soldiers occupying Chernobyl nuclear power station left after receiving high doses of radiation. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said it could not confirm the claims by the Ukrainian state power company Energoatom and was seeking an independent assessment.
Australia is to send Bushmaster armoured vehicles to Ukraine following an address to MPs by Zelenskiy. The prime minister, Scott Morrison, said: “We will send our armoured vehicles, Bushmasters … and we will fly them over in our C-17s to make sure they can be there to support [Ukraine].” Morrison suggested further aid would follow.
EU and Chinese leaders will meet for a first summit in two years on Friday with Brussels keen for assurances from Beijing that it will neither supply Russia with arms nor help Moscow circumvent western sanctions. EU officials close to the preparations of the summit said any help given to Russia would damage China’s international reputation and jeopardise relations with its biggest trade partners – Europe and the US.
