Talk peace now or suffer for generations, Ukraine’s Zelenskiy tells Russia

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy called on Saturday for comprehensive peace talks with Moscow to stop its invasion of Ukraine, saying it would otherwise take Russia “several generations” to recover from its losses in the war, Reuters reported.

Russian forces have taken heavy losses and their advance has largely stalled since President Vladimir Putin launched the assault on Feb. 24, with long columns of troops that bore down on Kyiv halted in its suburbs.

But they have laid siege to cities, blasting urban areas to rubble, and in recent days have intensified missile attacks on scattered targets in western Ukraine, away from the main battlefields in the north and east.

On Saturday, Russia said its hypersonic missiles had destroyed a large underground depot for missiles and aircraft ammunition in the western Ivano-Frankivsk region. Hypersonic weapons can travel faster than five times the speed of sound and the Interfax agency said it was the first time Russia had used them in Ukraine.

A spokesperson for the Ukrainian Air Force Command confirmed the attack, but said the Ukrainian side had no information on the type of missiles used.

Ukrainian authorities said on Saturday they have not seen any significant shifts over the past 24 hours in front line areas, noting the cities of Mariupol, Mykolaiv and Kherson in the south and Izyum in the east continued to see the heaviest fighting.

More than 3.3 million refugees have already fled Ukraine through its western border, with around 2 more million displaced inside the country. Efforts to evacuate civilians from cities under siege through “humanitarian corridors” continued.

Ukrainian authorities said they hoped to open 10 such evacuation routes on Saturday.

Unprecedented Western sanctions aimed at crippling Russia’s economy and starving its war machine have yet to halt what Putin calls a “special operation” to disarm its neighbour and purge it of “Nazis”. Kyiv and its allies have called this a baseless pretext for war.

“I’ll go (to Germany) for three weeks but I hope I can go home after that,” said Olga Pavlovska, a 28-year-old refugee in the Polish town of Przemysl, hoping Zelekskiy’s calls for comprehensive peace talks would bring an end to the invasion.

MARIUPOL’S MISERY

Ukraine’s defence ministry said on Friday it had “temporarily” lost access to the Azov Sea, a strategic link with the Black Sea, after Russia said it was “tightening the noose” around Mariupol.

Hundreds of thousands have been trapped there for over two weeks with power, water and heat supplies cut off. Its Soviet-era apartment blocks have been blasted into burned-out shells and bodies amid the rubble are a common sight. Local officials say fighting has reached the city centre and heavy shelling kept humanitarian aid from getting in.

Rescue workers were still searching for survivors in a Mariupol theatre that authorities say was flattened by Russian air strikes on Wednesday. Russia denies hitting the theatre and says it is not targeting civilians.

The Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office said on Saturday that 112 children had been killed since the invasion began. Reuters could not immediately verify the information.

Zelenskiy said refusal to compromise would come at a steep price for Russia.

“I want everyone to hear me now, especially in Moscow. The time has come for a meeting, it is time to talk,” he said in a video address. “The time has come to restore territorial integrity and justice for Ukraine. Otherwise, Russia’s losses will be such that it will take you several generations to recover.”

Russia last acknowledged on March 2 that nearly 500 of its soldiers had been killed and has offered no updates since; Ukraine says the number by now has reached many thousands. Reuters has not been able to independently verify the death toll.

Interfax quoted Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as saying Moscow expected its operation in Ukraine to end with a signing of an comprehensive agreement on security issues, including Ukraine’s neutral status.

LEARNING HOW TO FIGHT

Western analysts say Moscow seems to have underestimated the resistance it faced in Ukraine, where civilians who may have never fired a weapon until a few weeks ago joined regular forces to defend their country.

At a training facility in Odessa, a picturesque, multicultural Black Sea port, young urban professionals were learning about handling weapons and applying first aid.

“Every person should know how to fight, how to make medicine, aid for your relatives or other people,” said 26-year-old graphic designer Olga Moroz, training alongside her 32-year-old boyfriend.

Kyiv and Moscow reported some progress in talks this week towards a political formula that would guarantee Ukraine’s security, while keeping it outside NATO, though both sides accused each other of dragging things out.

Washington is worried a potential lifeline from Beijing – which has not condemned the invasion but has said it wants to see an end to the conflict – could blunt the sanctions’ impact. But a day after U.S. President Joe Biden warned China against giving Russia material support for its invasion, Lavrov said ties between Moscow and Beijing would only grow stronger.

“…Because at a time when the West is blatantly undermining all the foundations on which the international system is based, of course we – as two great powers – need to think how to carry on in this world,” Interfax quoted him as saying.