Putin to Guterres: “In Mariupol the situation is difficult and, perhaps, even tragic”

Euskaraz irakurri: Putinek Guterresi: “Mariupolen egoera zaila da eta, baliteke, tragikoa izatea”

Russian President Vladimir Putin admitted today that the situation in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, brutally besieged for weeks by the Russian Army, is “tragic” when meeting with UN Secretary General António Guterres.

“The situation there is difficult and, perhaps, even tragic,” Putin said during the meeting in the Kremlin.

Putin has stressed that in the telephone conversation held on Tuesday with the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, he has snapped that “military actions are taking place” in Mariupol.

“There are no military actions there. They are over,” he insisted, recalling that nearly 1,300 Ukrainian soldiers have laid down their arms and surrendered.

He has highlighted that the Azovstal steelworks, the last bastion of resistance where some thousand civilians and an undetermined number of combatants are refugees, is “completely isolated”. “I have given the order not to carry out any assault action,” she said.

In addition, he stressed that the Russian Army has asked the combatants in Azovstal to surrender and recalled that “nothing has happened” with the Mariupol soldiers who surrendered.

“It is a crime to retain civilians as human shields, if there are any,” he said.

In turn, Putin has rejected that, as Guterres said, the humanitarian corridors opened by Russia do not work. “They have been misinformed. They work. More than 100,000 have left Mariupol with our help. Some 130,000 or 140,000 have left. And they can go wherever they want,” he said.

From Moscow, the UN Secretary General will travel to kyiv, where on Wednesday will meet with Zelensky.

Meeting with Lavrov

Before seeing Putin, António Guterres met with the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov.

As Lavrov stated at the press conference after the meeting, Russia says it is ready to cooperate with the UN and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to protect the civilian population in Ukraine.

“Our objectives lie, above all, in the protection of the civilian population, we are interested in this in collaborating both with UN colleagues and with ICRC colleagues,” said the head of Russian diplomacy.

According to Lavrov, The head of the UN “is perfectly informed about the decisions made public by President Putin on the motives and objectives of the operation carried out by our military together with the Donetsk and Lugansk militias on Ukrainian territory.”

Also, the Russian president has refused the need for mediators in Ukraine; “talking about mediators at the current stage, in my view, is premature,” she said.

He criticized the behavior of the Ukrainian delegation in the negotiations, and recalled that Moscow “is still waiting for kyiv’s response to the settlement proposal that it submitted 10-12 days ago.”

He has accused the West of continuing the line of stuffing Ukraine with “massive quantities” of weapons. “If this continues, of course, the negotiations will hardly get any results,” she warned.

Guterres has responded by denouncing the “invasion” and “the violation of the territorial integrity” of Ukraine by the Russian Army and has called for an independent investigation about “possible war crimes”.

The head of the United Nations has stressed that the Secretariat of the multilateral organization does not have the authority to investigate allegations of violations of international law in Ukraine, but that there are appropriate institutions for this, such as the International Criminal Court and various mechanisms in the human rights system. humans.

Guterres and Lavrov, today, in Moscow. EFE.