Putin tells Ukraine to stop fighting amid new ceasefire calls as Mariupol evacuation fails again

Kyiv

RUSSIAN President Vladimir Putin said on Sunday (Mar 6) that his campaign in Ukraine was going according to plan and would not end until Kyiv stopped fighting, as efforts to evacuate the heavily bombarded city of Mariupol failed for a second day in a row.

Putin made the comments in a phone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyep Erdogan, who appealed for a ceasefire in the conflict that the United Nations says has created the fastest growing refugee crisis in Europe since World War Two.

Russian television said Putin also held talks on Sunday with President Emmanuel Macron, who has stayed in regular contact but, as with other international efforts, has yet to convince Moscow to call off a campaign now in its 11th day.

Authorities in Mariupol had said on Sunday that they would make a second attempt to evacuate some of the 400,000 residents. But the ceasefire plan collapsed, as it had on Saturday.

Kyiv has renewed its call for the West to toughen sanctions beyond existing efforts that have hammered Russia's economy, and has requested more weapons, including a plea for Russian-made planes, to help it repel Russian forces.

US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said Washington was considering how it could backfill aircraft for Poland, if that country decided to supply its warplanes to Ukraine.

Moscow and Kyiv traded blame over the collapse of Saturday's ceasefire to allow civilians to flee Mariupol and another southern city, Volnovakha.

Russia has repeatedly denied targetting civilian areas.

Elsewhere in Ukraine, police reported Russian shelling and air raids in the north-east Kharkiv region. Moscow said it had struck and disabled Starokostiantyniv air base in west Ukraine using high-precision weapons.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Russian rockets had destroyed the civilian airport of the central-western region capital of Vinnytsia on Sunday and that Russia was preparing to bombard another southern city, Odessa.

The World Health Organization said there had been several attacks on Ukrainian healthcare facilities during the conflict. The attacks caused multiple deaths and injuries, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a Twitter message, but gave no details.

"Attacks on healthcare facilities or workers breach medical neutrality and are violations of international humanitarian law," he said.

Ukrainians continued to spill into Poland, Romania, Slovakia and elsewhere. UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said more than 1.5 million people had fled in the fastest growing refugee crisis in Europe since World War Two. The agency has said the number could hit 4 million by July.

British military intelligence said on Sunday that Russian forces were targeting populated areas in Ukraine, comparing the tactics to those Russia used in Chechnya in 1999 and Syria in 2016. But it said Ukrainian resistance was slowing the advance. REUTERS

READ MORE:

• Visa, Mastercard suspend operations in Russia
• Aeroflot to suspend international flights from Mar 8