Amid a growing consensus that Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine is morphing into a bloody stalemate that could last months, the embattled strategic city of Mariupol rejected a Russian demand to surrender Monday even after the bombing of a local art school where officials said hundreds of people had taken shelter.
Russia said Ukrainian troops would be allowed safe passage out of the city in two designated corridors if Mariupol surrendered by 5 a.m. Monday. But the mayor quickly poured scorn on the offer, the news agency Interfax Ukraine reported, despite the intense suffering that the port city has experienced under enemy blockade.
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk also dismissed the Russian demand. “There can be no talk of any surrender, laying down of arms,” she told the Ukrainian Pravda news organization. “We have already informed the Russian side about this.”
The demand and blunt rejection of surrender came as Ukrainian officials on Sunday blamed the Kremlin for a new spate of deadly attacks on civilian targets, including the assault on the art school.
Ukrainian officials also accused Russian forces of seizing several thousand Mariupol residents and deporting them against their will to “remote cities in Russia.”
The reports of forced removals could not be independently verified given that few journalists or humanitarian aid workers have been able to enter Mariupol, where machine-gun battles rage daily between Russian forces and Ukrainian defenders. The Kremlin has not responded to the allegations, although Russian state media reported that buses filled with what they described as refugees have been arriving from Ukraine in recent days.
Linda Thomas-Greenfield, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told CNN on Sunday that she could not confirm the reports but added it would be “unconscionable for Russia to force Ukrainian citizens into Russia and put them in what will basically be concentration and prisoner camps.”
