Moscow sets 5 a.m. Monday deadline for Ukraine to return Mariupol; Ukraine declines – FOX13 News Memphis

MOSCOW — Russia’s Defense Ministry issued an ultimatum late Sunday to those who remain entrenched in the beleaguered port city of Mariupol in eastern Ukraine.

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“Lay down your arms… A terrible humanitarian catastrophe has developed… Everyone who lays down their arms is guaranteed a safe exit from Mariupol,” the Colonel-General said. Mikhail Mizintsev, director of the Russian National Defense Management Center, told a press conference on Sunday, The Guardian reported.

According to BBCMizintsev offered to open humanitarian corridors on Monday morning from Mariupol, going east and west of the port city, but the “safe passage” is based on all Ukrainian troops and “foreign mercenaries” depositing the weapons and leaving at 5 o’clock in the morning. Moscow time.

Once Mariupol’s surrender was complete, Mizintsev said humanitarian evacuation corridors would be opened at 10 a.m. Moscow time, followed by granting “safe passage” for humanitarian convoys carrying food, medicines and other supplies in the city from both directions from 12 noon Moscow time, reported the BBC.

According to The Kyiv Independenthowever, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk responded to Mizintsev’s demands by saying surrender was not an option.

According to BBCVereshchuk said early Monday there could be “no question” of surrender.

“We have already informed the Russian side about this,” she told Ukrainska Pravda, the BBC reported.

As things stand, Mizintsev said in his address that as many as 130,000 civilians are “held hostage” in the port city, but will be released to evacuate east or west if kyiv agrees to the terms before the 5 a.m. deadline in Moscow.

Previous efforts to evacuate civilians from Mariupol quickly failed when Russia resumed bombardment, pushing thousands of residents underground, where they have limited access to food, water and medical supplies. the BBC reported.

Meanwhile, the Mariupol city council warned on Saturday that thousands of city residents were being forcibly deported to Russia, The Washington Post reported.

“What the occupiers are doing today is familiar to the older generation, who saw the horrific events of World War II, when the Nazis captured people by force,” Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boychenko said on Saturday. , according to the official Telegram channel of the Mariupol City Council.

“It is hard to imagine that in the 21st century people will be forcibly deported to another country. Not only are Russian troops destroying our peaceful Mariupol, (but) they have gone even further and started expelling the people of Mariupol,” Boychenko added.

Members of the Mariupol city council said several thousand residents were captured from a sports hall where they had taken refuge and taken to “filtration camps”, where their phones and documents were inspected before to be sent to distant Russian cities, the post office reported.

Meanwhile, Pavlo Kyrylenko, the governor of Donetsk, said in a video shared on YouTube on Sunday that he had learned that around 1,000 people had been forced into Russia, the newspaper reported.

Allegations that Ukrainians were forcibly deported could not be independently verified on Sunday by the To post, The Guardian or the BBC.

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