Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has threatened to abandon peace talks over Moscow’s attempts to crush the last pocket of resistance in Mariupol.
The Russian attack on the Azovstal steel plants comes just days after Vladimir Putin said his troops would not storm the site, where hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians are holed up.
“If our men are killed in Mariupol, Ukraine will withdraw from any negotiation process,” Mr Zelensky said, ahead of a meeting with US secretary of state Antony Blinken and the US secretary of defence Lloyd Austin in Kyiv.
Speaking in a news conference, Mr Zelensky gave little detail about the meeting but said he expected concrete results — “not just presents or some kind of cakes, we are expecting specific things and specific weapons”.
Earlier Russia pounded several cities in southern and eastern Ukraine, killing a three-month-old baby along with eight others in the Black seaport city of Odesa.
“The war started when this baby was one month old. Can you imagine what is happening?” Mr Zelensky said. INDEPENDENT
