Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky accused Russia on Thursday for having attacked with tanks a convoy transporting humanitarian aid to the city of Mariupolbesieged by Russian forces from the first days of the invasion.
“Russian troops did not cease fire; Anyway, I decided to send a convoy to Mariupol with food, water and medicine, but the occupants launched a tank attack exactly where that corridor should have passed”Zelensky said.
“It’s assumed terror, brazen terror by experienced terrorists, the whole world should know about it,” he added in a message broadcast on television early Friday morning (Thursday night in Argentina), according to the AFP news agency.
Mariupol is a port city on the Sea of Azov, in southeastern Ukraine and within Donetsk, one of two pro-Russian separatist provinces – the other is Luhansk – that declared independence.
The Ukrainian government denounced on Wednesday that Russian forces bombed a children’s hospital, causing at least three deaths. -among them, a child- and 17 wounded, and caused stupor all over the world.
However, Russia denied the fact on Thursday, although with two different versions.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov did not deny the attack but assured that the hospital had long functioned as a base for Ukrainian nationalist militias..
Meanwhile, the Defense Ministry spokesman, Igor Konashenkov, maintained that the Russian forces did not carry out any attack on Mariupol and that everything was a “staging” by Ukraine.
On the other hand, Zelenski said that “one of the main tasks” this Thursday “was the organization of humanitarian corridors” in seven cities: Sumy, Trostyanets, Krasnopillia, Irpin, Bucha, Hostomel and Izium.
That allowed “almost 40,000” civilians to leave those cities today, who “were given security in Poltava, Kiev, Cherkasy, Zaporizhia, Dnipro and Leopolis.”
“It was also possible to deliver humanitarian supplies: hundreds of tons of food and medicine,” he stressed.
“Taking into account the work of the humanitarian corridors in the previous two days, we have already evacuated some 100,000 people,” he added, according to the Europa Press agency.
