Ukraine accuses Russia of more killings and deportations

Ukraine has accused Moscow's invasion force of killing dozens more civilians and deporting thousands even as mediator Turkey said it hoped a ceasefire could soon be agreed and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he wanted to meet Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin for talks to avert a possible "third World War".

Mr Zelenskiy also questioned Israel's position on the Russian invasion, and urged it to supply an air defence system to Ukraine and Pope Francis called on world leaders to stop "this repugnant war" during his Sunday address.

Meanwhile, Russia on Sunday night demanded that Ukrainian forces in Mariupol surrender and lay down their arms by 5am on Monday. However, Ukraine's deputy prime minister Iryna Vereshchuk said early on Monday "There can be no question of any surrender, laying down of arms," the Ukrainska Pravda news portal reported.

Russia continues to shell residential areas of towns and cities in eastern, southern and central Ukraine, including the capital Kyiv, as its land forces appear to make only slow and costly headway in an invasion that Mr Putin launched on February 24th.

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Moscow and Kyiv have not released recent casualty figures for their armed forces, but Ukraine says thousands of its civilians have been killed, and the United Nations estimates that some 10 million Ukrainians have been displaced by the fighting, about 3.5 million of whom have fled to the EU.

Footage from besieged Mariupol shows a city largely reduced to ruins after weeks of relentless bombardment, and local officials accused Moscow’s forces of bombing an art school where hundreds of people were sheltering.

Last week a bomb landed on a theatre in Mariupol where more than 1,000 people were reportedly gathered in the basement air-raid shelter. It is not clear how many people were killed and injured in the two incidents, but Russia denies striking civilian targets.

Residents

Ukrainian officials said about 40,000 people escaped the port city to safer parts of Ukraine over the last week, but they also accused invading troops of forcing thousands of Mariupol residents to go east to Russia, and said 56 people had been killed in Luhansk region when a tank fired on a care home for the elderly. None of the allegations could immediately be verified.

Western officials suspect Russia of using tentative peace talks to play for time while trying to secure a decisive advantage on the battlefield, but Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu – who met his Russian and Ukrainian counterparts last week – said he saw a "rapprochement in the positions of both sides on important subjects, critical subjects".

“We can say we are hopeful for a ceasefire if the sides do not take a step back from the current positions,” he added.

Mr Zelenskiy told CNN “we have to use . . . any chance to have a possibility of negotiating, of talking to Putin. But if these attempts fail that would mean this is a third World War.”

Weapons

Addressing the Israeli Knesset, Mr Zelenskiy asked "why we can't receive weapons from you, why Israel has not imposed powerful sanctions on Russia or is not putting pressure on Russian business".

“Everybody knows that your missile defence systems are the best . . . and that you can definitely help our people, save the lives of Ukrainians, of Ukrainian Jews.”

Pope Francis decried the “senseless massacre” in Ukraine, and urged the international community to “truly commit themselves to stopping this repugnant war”.