Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has accused Moscow of kidnapping the mayor of Melitopol – a port city in the south of the country now controlled by Russia.
In a video address he said the actions were equivalent to Islamic State “terrorists” and that Russian forces were trying to “physically liquidate representatives of Ukraine’s lawful local authorities”.
Kirill Timoshenko, the deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office, posted a video on the social media site Telegram which he said showed a group of armed men carrying mayor Ivan Fedorov across a square.
The prosecutor’s office of the Luhansk People’s Republic, a Moscow-backed rebel region in eastern Ukraine, said on its website that there was a criminal case against Mr Fedorov.
The prosecutor’s office accused him of “terrorist activities” and of financing the nationalist militia Right Sector to “commit terrorist crimes against Donbas civilians”.
The office said it was looking for Mr Fedorov and called for anyone with information about his whereabouts to contact them. Russia has not commented on what has happened to Mr Fedorov.
It comes as authorities warned of a humanitarian catastrophe in the port city of Mariupol, which has been encircled by Russian forces and cut off from deliveries of food and medicine.
Mariupol officials said on Friday that 1,582 people had been killed in the 12 days since the siege began.
“There is a humanitarian catastrophe in the city and the dead aren’t even being buried,” Mariupol’s mayor‘s office said in a statement calling for Russian forces to lift the siege.
Ukrainian authorities have accused Russian forces of shelling evacuation routes and preventing civilians from escaping the city of 430,000 people.
Meanwhile, heavy fighting continued on Saturday northwest of Kyiv, with the bulk of Russian ground forces 25 km (16 miles) from the centre of the Ukrainian capital, the UK defence ministry said.
Ukraine’s deputy prime minister Iryna Vereshchuk said she hoped that several humanitarian corridors would open on Saturday for thousands of residents in the bombarded cities.
“I hope that the day will go well, all the planned routes will be open and Russia will fulfill its obligations to guarantee the ceasefire regime,” Vereshchuk said in a video address.
The Independent has a proud history of campaigning for the rights of the most vulnerable, and we first ran our Refugees Welcome campaign during the war in Syria in 2015. Now, as we renew our campaign and launch this petition in the wake of the unfolding Ukrainian crisis, we are calling on the government to go further and faster to ensure help is delivered. To find out more about our Refugees Welcome campaign, click here. To sign the petition click here. If you would like to donate then please click here for our GoFundMe page.
Additional reporting by AP
