Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk defied Moscow's ultimatum to surrender Mariupol by 5:00 a.m. on Monday as residents in the area continued to hunker down amid attacks from Russia's military forces.
The director of the Russian National Defense Management Center, Col-Gen. Mikhail Mizintsev, told Ukrainians during a news briefing on Sunday to lay down their arms. He said that a terrible humanitarian catastrophe has developed in the region and he guaranteed safe passage out of Mariupol to anyone who complies with his demands.
Surrender Mariupol
Mizintsev allegedly offered to open humanitarian corridors on Monday morning that stemmed from Mariupol and went east and west outward of the port city. However, Russian authorities only offered safe passage if all Ukrainian troops and foreign mercenaries laid down their arms and left by the allotted time frame.
The Russian official said that when Ukrainians successfully complete the surrender of Mariupol the humanitarian corridors would be opened by 10:00 a.m., Moscow time. The process would be followed by the safe passage of humanitarian convoys that would carry food, medicine, and other supplies into the city, as per WFTV9.
In an interview with Ukrainska Pravda, an online newspaper, Vereshchuk, a social activist and politician, said that now was not the time to discuss surrendering weapons at the behest of Russia. She demanded that Moscow should instead open humanitarian corridors and allow roughly 350,000 people trapped in the area to leave the battlefield.
Previously, Russia's Ministry of Defense said that Ukraine had until the given 5:00 a.m. Mar. 21 deadline to respond to Moscow's proposals. They warned that more than a "court-martial" awaits anyone who did not surrender to Russia.
According to The Moscow Times, since the beginning of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the southern port city of Mariupol has become a pivotal target in President Vladimir Putin's strategy. It provides a land bridge between Russian forces stationed in Crimea to the southwest and Russian-controlled territory to the north and east.
Russia-Ukraine War
Mariupol has been under siege by Russian troops for nearly four weeks before the proposal for surrender by Moscow. However, Vereshchuk said that, instead of wasting time on eight pages of letters, Moscow should just open humanitarian corridors in exchange for nothing because it was the right thing to do.
The two sides have blamed each other for the failure to open such a humanitarian corridor in the last few weeks. Mizintsev said that Ukrainian "bandits, "neo-Nazis," and nationalists who were engaged in what he called "mass terror" and went on killing sprees in the city were to blame.
The southern port city has suffered one of the heaviest bombardments that have left people in the area with little, if any, food, water, or power. The city council has claimed that thousands of residents have been "deported" to Russia in the last week.
Since Feb. 24, when the first wave of Russian forces invaded Ukraine, the death toll has been recorded in the thousands while roughly 10 million others have been displaced. Many also fear a wider confrontation between Russia and the United States, The Guardian reported.
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