Ukraine accuses Russia of abducting thousands from Mariupol

Thousands of Mariupol residents have been “abducted” from their homes in the city and forcibly relocated to Russia, Ukrainian officials have said.

“Over the past week, several thousand Mariupol residents have been taken to Russian territory. The occupiers illegally took people from the Livoberezhny district and from the shelter in the sports club building, where more than a thousand people (mostly women and children) were hiding from the constant bombing,” the city council said in a statement.

Moscow had called on Ukraine to surrender by 5am today, a demand rejected by the city’s defenders. The Kremlin has threatened Ukrainian soldiers fighting in the city with military trials if they do not surrender.

At least 200,000 people are estimated to be trapped in Mariupol, now the focus of the Russian advance. Ukrainian officials say it has been up to 90 per cent destroyed or damaged by indiscriminate Russian artillery fire.

This morning’s key developments:
• Russia has been accused of ‘abducting’ Ukrainians and taking them to Russian camps.

• Putin is a “compulsive liar” and can’t be trusted in negotiations, says Saijd Javid.
  
  • President Zelensky suggests peace talks could be held in Jerusalem.
  
  • The UN says ten million Ukrainians have been forced to flee their homes. Poland says it has taken 2.1 million.
  
  • President Biden is to hold discussions with Boris Johnson and other European leaders.

Cut off from the rest of Ukraine by Russian troops, Mariupol is without electricity, heat or means of communicating with the outside world. Attempts to evacuate civilians from the city have been thwarted by Russian shelling of evacuation routes.

Sajid Javid, the health secretary, said Russia needed to be held to account for its actions, echoing the prime minister’s statement that President Putin is a “war criminal”. Javid also accused Putin of being a “compulsive liar”, making it difficult to trust him in negotiations.

Josep Borrell, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, called Moscow’s assault on Mariupol “a massive war crime”, with the bloc considering further sanctions on Russia in response.

President Biden will discuss the West’s response with four European leaders today: Boris Johnson, the French president Emmanuel Macron, Germany’s chancellor Olaf Scholz and Mario Draghi, the Italian prime minister.

Biden will fly to Poland on Friday to meet Andrzej Duda, the Polish president. The country’s border guard said today 2.1 million Ukrainian refugees had crossed the border since the invasion began.

As many as ten million people have had to flee their homes since the Russian invasion began, the UN’s refugee agency has said.

“The war in Ukraine is so devastating that ten million have fled — either displaced inside the country, or as refugees abroad,” Filippo Grandi, the UN high commissioner for refugees, tweeted on Monday. “Among the responsibilities of those who wage war, everywhere in the world, is the suffering inflicted on civilians who are forced to flee their homes.”

Zelensky suggested peace talks could be held in Jerusalem after he addressed Israel’s Knesset via video call on Sunday. He said Naftali Bennett, the Israeli prime minister, was “trying to find a way to negotiate with Russia” and that “sooner or later we start talking to Russia, perhaps in Jerusalem. This is the right place to find peace.”

Bennett warned that a solution to the conflict was still far off, however. “There’s still a long way to go, because ... there are several issues in dispute, some of them fundamental,” he said. He added that Israel, “together with other friends in the world, will continue trying to bridge the gap and bring an end to the war”.

Ukraine has rejected Russian demands to surrender Mariupol, where thousands of civilians have been trapped since the first days of the war.

Russia has bombarded the strategically important port from land, sea and air, and offered residents a safe passage out if a white flag was waved by early this morning. Ukraine dismissed the offer and the deadline passed.

Iryna Vereshchuk, a deputy prime minister, told Ukrainian Pravda: “There can be no talk of any surrender, laying down of arms. We have already informed the Russian side about this.”

Of the Russian offer, made in an eight-page document, Vereshchuk said: “I wrote: ‘Instead of wasting time on eight pages of letters, just open the corridor.’”

Piotr Andryushchenko, the mayor of Mariupol, also dismissed the demand for surrender, according to the news agency Interfax Ukraine.

The Russian military said it would allow two corridors out of Mariupol, leading either east towards Russia or west to other parts of Ukraine. It did not say what would happen if the offer was rejected.

Colonel-General Mikhail Mizintsev, director of the Russian National Centre for Defence Management, claimed that Ukrainian “bandits”, “neo-Nazis” and nationalists had engaged in “mass terror” and embarked on a killing spree in the city.

“A terrible humanitarian catastrophe has developed,” Mizintsev said. “All who lay down their arms are guaranteed safe passage out of Mariupol.”

If the city is seized it would give Russia control over much of Ukraine’s southern coast. Satellite images have shown significant destruction to residential areas.

Russia said about 130,000 of Mariupol’s 400,000 residents remain. They are trapped with little if any food, water and power following a collapse in basic services.

Russian forces advancing on Kyiv from the northeast have stalled, British intelligence said on Monday morning, and the bulk of Russian forces remain more than 15 miles from the centre of the capital.

“Heavy fighting continues north of Kyiv,” the Ministry of Defence said. “Forces advancing from the direction of Hostomel to the northwest have been repulsed by fierce Ukrainian resistance.”

In his emotional appeal to Israel on Sunday, Zelensky compared Russia’s invasion of his country to the actions of Nazi Germany.

At least eight people were killed in the overnight shelling of the Retroville shopping mall in northwest Kyiv. The ten-storey building was hit in its car park and fitness centre leaving a crater several metres wide.

Security camera footage showed a massive explosion and a mushroom cloud, followed by a series of smaller blasts. Firefighters rescued at least one man from the bombed-out building debris and soldiers have cordoned off the site, warning of danger from unexploded munitions.