Ukraine has accused Russia of wiping some of its cities off the map, with its defence minister saying the Kremlin’s siege of Mariupol constitutes “genocide”.
Oleksii Reznikov made the comments during a visit to London, where he met his British counterpart Ben Wallace and the foreign secretary Liz Truss on Monday.
While trying to drum up further western support, Mr Reznikov warned that Vladimir Putin would inevitably “go further” unless he was stopped.
“Several small cities in Ukraine have simply been wiped off the face of the Earth. The last time such destruction was in Europe was during World War II,” Mr Reznikov said.
“Moscow is afraid of our army so they are fighting civilians. This is state terrorism,” he added.
In particular, the Ukrainian defence minister highlighted the plight of Mariupol’s 400,000 citizens, who “have been surrounded, without food, water, light, air” for three weeks. By one local estimate, as many as 20,000 people may have died so far in the besieged port city.
Mr Reznikov said Russia had deliberately targeted a hospital and a theatre there, where hundreds of women and children had been sheltering.
The Ukrainian minister also praised the bravery of Mariupol’s inhabitants, saying their city was preventing Russia from making further advances across the country.
“By virtue of their dedication and superhuman courage, tens of thousands of lives throughout Ukraine were saved. Today Mariupol is saving Kyiv, Dnipro and Odessa,” he said.
His words came after his government refused to surrender Mariupol to the Russians on Monday morning, saying it would continue to fight against the invading forces.
“There can be no question of any surrender” in the south-eastern city, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister Iryna Vereshchuk said. Attempts to create humanitarian corridors out of the beleaguered city are still failing, she added.
“What I saw, I hope no one will ever see,” Manolis Androulakis, Greece’s consul general in Mariupol, said after fleeing the city. He compared it to places like Guernica and Aleppo which had been “completely destroyed by war”.
It is feared that Russia will increase the intensity of its attack on the city, after one of its supply ships landed in the nearby port of Berdyansk for the first time on Monday.
Elsewhere in the country, Russian forces allegedly threw stun grenades at unarmed protesters in the city of Kherson on Monday, firing gunshots to disperse them.
“Russian security forces ran up, started throwing stun grenades into the crowd and shooting,” the Ukrainian armed forces said in a statement.
Footage posted online appeared to corroborate this claim, as it showed several hundred Ukrainian demonstrators running for cover as projectiles landed around them in the port city’s Freedom Square. One person was injured in the attack, according to the Ukrainian authorities.
To the west, a Russian air strike reportedly hit civilian houses in Odessa, the first time this has occurred in the Black Sea city during the 26-day conflict. No one was killed by the blast, the city council said.
Over in the capital, eight people were killed overnight by a Russian attack, which destroyed a shopping centre in Kyiv. Rescue teams combed through the rubble after the deadliest attack so far in the city.
As a result of the shelling, officials introduced a day-and-a-half curfew in the city from Monday night. Russian forces are still 15 miles from the city centre, British military intelligence suggests.
With the UN estimating that more than 900 civilians have been killed during the war, the EU has accused Mr Putin of war crimes.
However, despite implementing a range of sanctions against Russia, European foreign ministers have not yet agreed to stop buying Russian energy. Germany is one of the countries arguing that the bloc is too dependent on its oil to proceed with an embargo.
