UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has told Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov that he is concerned about reports of possible war crimes in Ukraine and that independent investigations are needed.
As Russian forces pounded eastern Ukraine on April 26, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin promised to “keep moving heaven and earth” to get Kyiv the weapons it needs to repel the new offensive.
Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said Russia continued to attack the Azovstal plant in the besieged port of Mariupol despite Russian claims that it had established a humanitarian corridor to allow civilians to leave the city.
Guterres, who is on a visit to Moscow, said he is concerned about reports of alleged war crimes committed by Russia in Ukraine and that the United Nations is ready to fully mobilize the world body’s resources to save lives and evacuate people from the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol.
“We urgently need humanitarian corridors that are truly safe and effective,” Guterres told a news conference with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
“Thousands of civilians are in dire need of lifesaving humanitarian assistance,” Guterres said.
The sprawling steel complex has remained the last bulwark of Ukrainian resistance in the strategic Sea of Azov port city.
Ukrainian officials have said that up to 1,000 civilians have sheltered in the maze of underground tunnels there. They have repeatedly urged Russia to offer them a safe exit, but previous attempts at organizing evacuations have failed repeatedly.
Guterres described his talks with Lavrov as “frank,” but insisted he is visiting Moscow as a “messenger of peace.”
He is scheduled to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow later on April 26, but expectations from the meeting are reported to be low.
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Fighting continued on April 26 in eastern Ukraine, where the city of Kreminna in the Luhansk region has reportedly fallen to the Russians.
Street-to-street fighting had been going on for days in Kreminna, with civilian evacuations there made impossible by the war, the British Ministry of Defense said on Twitter on April 26.
The British report said heavy fighting was under way in the south of the city of Izyum, as Russian forces try to advance toward the cities of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk in the Donetsk region.
“Ukrainian forces have been preparing defenses in Zaporizhzhya in preparation for a potential Russian attack from the south,” it added in the regular bulletin, also saying that Russian troops were likely to attempt to encircle Ukrainian Army’s heavily fortified positions in the east.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said that more help for Ukraine was on the way, as he convened a meeting of officials from around 40 countries at the U.S. Ramstein Air Base in Germany to pledge more weapons.
Germany said it had cleared the way for delivery of Gepard anti-aircraft guns to Ukraine.
“This gathering reflects the galvanized world,” Austin said in his opening remarks. He added that he wanted officials to leave the meeting “with a common and transparent understanding of Ukraine’s near-term security requirements because we’re going to keep moving heaven and earth so that we can meet them.”
Earlier, Austin voiced hope that Russia’s losses in Ukraine will prevent the Kremlin from repeating its aggression elsewhere.
Austin, who has visited Ukraine with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and announced an extra $700 million in military aid for Kyiv, said Washington wants to see “Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine,” adding that the Ukrainians can still win the war if given the right support.
The United States has sent some $4 billion in military aid since President Joe Biden’s term began last year, and already announced a new $800 million aid package last week.
Lavrov said late on April 25 that Western arms shipments to Ukraine mean that NATO is essentially engaging in war with Russia through a proxy and arming that proxy, and weapons delivered to Ukraine from the West will be “legitimate targets” for the Russian military.
Lavrov also warned of the threat of a third world war and said there was a “considerable” risk of the conflict escalating to nuclear weapons.
“The danger is serious, it is real, it must not be underestimated,” Lavrov said.
But Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Lavrov’s comments are meant to just “scare the world off supporting Ukraine.”
Earlier, Russia’s ambassador in Washington told the United States to halt arms shipments, warning that large Western deliveries of weapons were inflaming the conflict.
