Nearly 100,000 in Mariupol left in 'inhumane conditions'

KYIV • Almost 100,000 people are trapped by Russian bombardment and facing starvation in the ruins of Mariupol, Ukraine's leader said, as Moscow accused Washington of undermining peace talks.

Tens of thousands of residents have already fled the besieged southern port city, bringing harrowing testimony of a "freezing hellscape riddled with dead bodies and destroyed buildings", according to Human Rights Watch.

"Failing in their war against the Ukrainian people, the enemy is executing the total destruction of critical infrastructure," Ukraine's armed forces command said on Facebook.

In his latest video address, President Volodymyr Zelensky said more than 7,000 people had escaped Mariupol in the last 24 hours, but one group travelling along an agreed humanitarian route west of the city were "simply captured by the occupiers".

"Today, the city still has nearly 100,000 people in inhumane conditions. In a total siege. Without food, water, medication, under constant shelling and under constant bombing," he said.

Satellite images of Mariupol released by private company Maxar showed a charred landscape, with several buildings ablaze and smoke billowing from the city.

Ukrainian forces also reported "heavy" ground fighting, with Russian "infantry storming the city" after they rejected a Monday ultimatum to surrender.

United Nations relief agencies estimate there have been around 20,000 civilian casualties in Mariupol, and perhaps 3,000 killed, but they point out that the actual figure remains unknown.

"Even if Mariupol falls, Ukraine cannot be conquered city by city, street by street, house by house," UN chief Antonio Guterres said.

"This war is unwinnable. Sooner or later, it will have to move from the battlefield to the peace table. That is inevitable."

Mariupol is a pivotal target in President Vladimir Putin's war - providing a land bridge between Russian forces in Crimea to the south-west and Russian-controlled territory to the north and east.

"Putin's offensive is stuck despite all the destruction that it is bringing day after day," German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said in a speech to the Bundestag, warning of further Western sanctions against Russia.

Mr Putin "must hear the truth" that not only is the war destroying Ukraine, "but also Russia's future", he said.

On the ground, Russia's Defence Ministry has reported some advances in the south-east of Ukraine and boasted of strikes using next-generation weaponry against "military infrastructure" across the country. But Ukraine and its allies have claimed Russian forces are severely depleted, poorly supplied and still unable to carry out complex operations.

For the first time, there are signs that Ukrainian forces are going on the offensive, retaking a town near Kyiv and attacking Russian forces in the south of the country.

"We're definitely seeing anecdotal evidence... that the Ukrainians are not only defending well, where they choose to defend, but they are making efforts to take back territory," a senior US defence official told journalists.

In the southern city of Mykolaiv, one bulwark of the fightback, residents said they were determined to stay despite incessant bombardment. Two civilians were killed in overnight shelling in the Mykolaiv region.

Nearly a month on since Russia invaded Ukraine, stop-start peace talks have agreed on daily humanitarian corridors for refugees, and Ukraine says it is willing to countenance some Russian demands subject to a national referendum.

But it has refused to bow to Russian pressure to disarm and renounce all Western alliances, and Mr Zelensky was also due today to address a Nato summit in Brussels joined by US President Joe Biden. For Ukrainians besieged in Mariupol and other cities, Russian talk of peace rings hollow as they come under indiscriminate shelling that Western countries say amounts to a war crime.

In other military developments, Russia said its forces used long-range weapons fired from the sea to hit a Ukrainian arms depot outside the north-western city of Rivne and two Tochka-U missile launchers in an industrial zone in the outskirts of Kyiv. The Defence Ministry published footage of what it said was eight Kalibr missiles being fired from a warship at Ukraine's military infrastructure.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian officials said that a bridge was destroyed over the River Desna in Chernihiv and residential buildings and a shopping mall were struck in two districts of Kyiv, wounding at least four people.

In a daily intelligence update, Britain's Defence Ministry said the entire battlefield across northern Ukraine - which includes huge armoured columns that once bore down on Kyiv - was now "static", with the invaders apparently trying to reorganise.

But in the east, the Russians were trying to link troops at Mariupol with those near Kharkiv in the hope of encircling Ukrainian forces, while in the south-west they were bypassing the city of Mykolaiv to try to advance on Odessa, Ukraine's biggest port.

The tenacious Ukrainian resistance and the heavy losses inflicted on Russia - which for weeks has not disclosed a military death toll - mean that this war is very different to the operation to annex Crimea in 2014 and the intervention from 2015 in Syria to bolster the regime there.

A senior US defence official said on Tuesday that Russia's combat power in Ukraine has declined below 90 per cent of its pre-invasion levels.

While the increasing Russian losses could put President Putin under domestic pressure, so far there has been no sign of any critical split within the Russian elite.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, REUTERS, BLOOMBERG