Fighting raged in the critical port city of Odessa and across Ukraine’s east as fresh evacuations of civilians from war-ravaged Mariupol were set to take place Tuesday.
The United States was warning that Moscow is preparing to formally annex regions in the east, while the European Union told member states to brace for a complete breakdown in Russian gas supplies as it prepared a new package of sanctions.
Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov meanwhile sparked outrage by alleging Adolf Hitler may have “had Jewish blood,” invoking a conspiracy theory in a bid to discredit Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky – who is of Jewish ancestry.
Israel – which has sought to keep a delicate balance between the two sides since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – condemned the remarks and summoned Moscow’s ambassador.
Zelensky also slammed Lavrov’s remarks as “anti-Semitic,” and said they showed Russia had “forgotten all the lessons of World War II.”
“It is no coincidence that they are waging a so-called total war to destroy all living things, after which only the burned ruins of entire cities and villages remain,” he added.
The war has seen Moscow, after failing to take the capital Kyiv, shift its two-month-old invasion to largely Russian-speaking areas and step up pressure on Odessa, a cultural hub that is a crucial port on the Black Sea.
Odessa’s city council said a Russian strike hit a residential building housing five people.
A 15-year-old boy was killed and a girl was hospitalized, the council said on Telegram.
Russia’s invasion has killed thousands of people and displaced more than 13 million in a war the scale of which has not been seen in Europe for generations.
Among the most battered cities is Mariupol, where an untold number have died and survivors have little access to food, water and medicine as Russia battles to connect the southern and eastern strips of land under its control.
The city is now largely calm, AFP journalists saw on a recent press tour organized by Russian forces, apart from the muffled rumble of explosions coming from the direction of the Azovstal steel plant, the last holdout of Ukrainian forces in Mariupol.
Daily life is now dominated by the hunt for the most basic of essentials, locals say.
“We don’t live, we survive,” said Irina, a 30-year-old video game designer wearing a grey sweatshirt, the little face of a Yorkshire Terrier sticking out from her backpack.
Kyiv said more than 100 civilians were evacuated over the weekend from the sprawling Azovstal complex, where soldiers and civilians have been sheltering in a maze of underground tunnels.
Sviatoslav Palamar, deputy commander of Ukraine’s Azov military unit, said another 20 people were transferred out on Monday evening, but only after a five-hour delay as “the enemy’s artillery caused new rubble and destruction.”
