Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelenski said the risk of ending peace talks with Moscow is too high. Members of the US Congress also pledged to move quickly to confirm the $33-billion aid package plan for Kiev.
During his visit to Kiev yesterday, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said intense negotiations were under way for the evacuation of civilians at the steel factory in Mariupol, which was subjected to heavy Russian bombardment.
One of the combatants in the city, which is a key target of the Russian invasion, told Reuters that Guterres' words had hoped that hundreds of civilians, who had been trapped with them in the factory for weeks, would eventually be evacuated after several failed attempts.
Zelenski’s office said that an operation was planned to remove civilians from the facility today, but no sign of evacuation activity has yet appeared. In a later statement, Zelenski pointed out that there is deep anger in the public against the massacres committed by Russian soldiers, using pessimistic expressions about the ongoing peace talks with Russia.
"The Ukrainians want to kill them," the Interfax news agency quoted the Ukrainian President as telling Polish journalists. It is difficult to talk about matters with such attitude," he said.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused Kiev of "changing its stance with instructions from the United States and the United Kingdom".
Zelenski praised the $33-billion aid package that US President Joe Biden announced yesterday. The package is nearly 10 times the amount of help Washington has sent since the beginning of the Russian invasion on February 24.
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