Key points:
Zelenskiy told Moscow: “It’s time to meet. Time to talk. It is time to restore territorial integrity and justice for Ukraine. Otherwise Russia’s losses will be so huge that several generations will not be enough to rebound.
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”More than 9,000 people were evacuated from the besieged Mariupol, he said, and hundreds of tons of essential products were delivered. But he added: “The occupiers continue to block the supply of humanitarian aid to the besieged cities in most areas. This is a totally deliberate tactic. They have a clear order to do absolutely everything to make the humanitarian catastrophe in Ukrainian cities an ‘argument’ for Ukrainians to cooperate with the occupiers. This is a war crime.”
Mariupol
Zelenskiy said people were being rescued from the rubble, and that more than 130 people had been rescued so far. “Some of them are seriously wounded. But at the moment there is no information about the dead,” he said. Hundreds of civilians were sheltering in the theatre.
He thanked those defending Mariupol, saying the city was experiencing “the greatest ordeal in its history, in the history of Ukraine.”
Russian forces had been stopped “in almost all directions”
Zelenskiy said Russian forces were halted across many areas of the country. He said there was heavy fighting in the Kharkiv region, especially near Izyum, but that Russian troops were unprepared.
He said: “Negotiations on peace, on security for us, for Ukraine - meaningful, fair and without delay - are the only chance for Russia to reduce the damage from its own mistakes.”