Ukrainian officials defiantly rejected a Russian demand that their forces in Mariupol lay down arms and raise white flags on Monday in exchange for safe passage out of the besieged strategic port city.
Russia has been barraging the encircled southern city on the Sea of Azov, hitting an art school sheltering some 400 people only hours before offering to open two corridors out of the city in return for the capitulation of its defenders, according to Ukrainian officials.
Russian Colonel General Mikhail Mizintsev said on Sunday that Moscow would allow two corridors out of the coastal city, heading east towards Russia and west to other parts of Ukraine.
He gave Mariupol until 5am on Monday (02:00 GMT) to respond to the offer, saying a “terrible humanitarian catastrophe has developed” in the besieged city, where fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces have trapped residents without food, water or power.
“All who lay down their arms are guaranteed safe passage out of Mariupol,” he said, without saying what action Russia would take if the offer was rejected.
The Russian Ministry of Defence, addressing Mariupol authorities on messaging app Telegram, said the officials “now have the right to make a historic choice” and warned they could face a military tribunal if they sided with what it described as “criminals”.
But Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Irina Vereshchuk rejected the demand.
“There can be no question of any surrender, laying down of arms. We have already informed the Russian side about this,” she told the news outlet Ukrainska Pravda.
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“I wrote: ‘Instead of wasting time on eight pages of letters, just open the corridor.’”
In a video on Telegram, Vereshchuk added that the Russians “continue to behave like terrorists”.
“They say they agree on the humanitarian corridor and in the morning, shell the place for evacuation,” she said.
‘Every house became a target’
Mariupol, a city of 400,000 people, has suffered some of the heaviest bombardments since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24. City officials say at least 2,300 people have died, some buried in mass graves.
Mariupol Mayor Piotr Andryushchenko also rejected the Russian demand for surrender, saying in a Facebook post he did not need to wait until morning to respond and cursing at the Russians, according to the news agency Interfax Ukraine.
According to Al Jazeera, Moscow’s call for surrender came hours after Ukrainian authorities said the Russian military bombed an art school in Mariupol that was sheltering hundreds of people.
There was no immediate word on casualties in the school attack.
Speaking in a video address, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that about 400 civilians were taking shelter at the art school in the besieged Azov Sea port city when it was struck by a Russian bomb.
“They are under the rubble, and we don’t know how many of them have survived.
“But we know that we will certainly shoot down the pilot who dropped that bomb, like about 100 other such mass murderers whom we already have downed,” he said.
The raid on the art school was the second time in less than a week that officials reported an attack on a public building where Mariupol residents had taken shelter.
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