A third operation is underway to evacuate civilians from the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol and the besieged Azovstal steel plant, the UN secretary-general said on Thursday. Antonio Guterresto the Security Council of the organization.
The United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) have so far helped almost 500 civilians to flee the area during two operations in the last week. Guterres declined to give details about the new one “to avoid undermining its potential success.”
“I hope that continued coordination with Moscow and kyiv will lead to more humanitarian pauses to allow civilians to pass safely from the fighting and for aid to reach those in critical need,” he told the 15-member Security Council. “We must continue to do everything we can to get people out of these hellish landscapes.”
UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet told the Security Council that for about five weeks from the end of February in areas around kyiv, “Russian forces attacked male civilians whom they considered suspicious.” Russia has denied targeting civilians.
The men were arrested, beaten, summarily executed and, in some cases, taken to Belarus and Russia, unknown to their families, and held in pre-trial detention centers,” he said.
China’s ambassador to the UN, Zhang Jun, described the humanitarian crisis caused by the conflict as “appalling” and said the increase in civilian casualties was “deeply regrettable”. He called on all parties to exercise the utmost restraint to avoid harming civilians.
“The surrender of arms will not bring peace and the conflict has no winners,” said Zhang, pressing for talks to end the war.
Guterres also warned that the Russian invasion of Ukraine launched on February 24 was putting even more pressure on the developing world.
He told the Security Council that he was ready to facilitate talks on “reintegrating Ukraine’s agricultural production and Russian and Belarusian food and fertilizer production into world markets, despite the war.”
Russia calls its actions in Ukraine a “special operation.”