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Irpin in northern Kyiv: 2.3 million people are said to have left Ukraine in the meantime
Photo: ARIS MESSINIS / AFP
It sounded downright grotesque what the Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov told the world at the meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart in Antalya, Turkey: »We will not attack any other countries.
We didn't invade Ukraine either."
Asked about the bombing of a children's hospital and maternity hospital in the port city of Mariupol, Lavrov said it was "spooky clamor about alleged atrocities committed by Russia."
Lavrov accused the United States of secretly operating laboratories for the development of biological weapons in Ukraine.
The meeting was inconclusive in the face of such monstrosities.
He has no mandate to negotiate a ceasefire, Lavrov said.
It's the 15th day of the war.
The most important reports at a glance.
humanitarian situation
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) reports that 2.3 million people have now left Ukraine.
According to Mayor Vitali Klitschko, every second resident of Kiev has now left the city.
The city of Sumy in the northeast should continue to be the focus of the ongoing evacuations.
Residents have already boarded the minibuses provided, government officials said.
About 2,000 people were rescued from the city of Izyum in the east of the country, said the head of the Kharkiv region, Oleh Synyehubov, on Facebook.
However, rescue operations in the port city of Mariupol on the Azov Sea failed again.
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Wereshchuk made a dramatic appeal to the international community to support the port city that has been surrounded by Russian troops for days.
"Help Mariupol!
There is a real humanitarian catastrophe there," said the 42-year-old on Thursday via video message.
Once again, no aid transport had arrived.
In the Donetsk region, the escape corridor from Volnowakha to Pokrovsk did not come about.
Elsewhere, however, humanitarian corridors have been successfully established.
"In the past two days we have moved more than 60,000 people from the cities of Sumy, Trostianets and Krasnopillya to Poltava," Vereshchuk said.
According to her, it was also possible to save about 3,000 people from the city of Izyum in the Kharkiv region.
More than 100 tons of relief supplies were also brought to the embattled small town.
“Around 20,000 people were evacuated from the cities of Bucha, Irpin, Hostomel, Worsel and others in the Kyiv region yesterday alone,” said the Deputy Prime Minister.
The action will continue.
In addition, more than 100 tons of relief supplies were brought to the nuclear power plant town of Enerhodar.
military situation
According to the city council, there were new airstrikes on Mariupol on Thursday.
Bombs had been dropped near a residential building, the city council announced at noon via Telegram.
The technical university near the city center was hit.
Impacts were seen on video.
The Russian Ministry of Defense also announced the capture of several districts of Mariupol.
According to British reports, the long Russian military convoy north-west of Kyiv made only slow progress last week.
In addition, he is suffering persistent losses, said the Ministry of Defense in London.
As casualties mount, Russian President Vladimir Putin will be forced to draw on the Russian armed forces and other sources to replace losses.
There has also been a notable drop in overall air force activity over Ukraine in recent days.
Pressure from EU partners on Germany
As the war continued, tensions between the EU states over the future common course grew.
At a meeting of heads of state and government in Versailles near Paris on Thursday, countries like Latvia made it clear that they no longer consider Germany's refusal to stop energy imports from Russia to be sustainable.
"I am convinced that we should take the decision to stop energy imports from Russia in order to bring (Russian President Vladimir) Putin to the negotiating table and end the war," said Latvian Prime Minister Krisjanis Karins.
In doing so, he sided with countries like Poland and Lithuania, which had previously advocated such a move to deprive the Russian state of its main source of income.
Opinions also differed on how to deal with Ukraine's application for EU membership.
Here, too, Chancellor Olaf Scholz was on the side of those EU states that are on the brakes.
The SPD politician spoke out clearly against the possibility of accelerating the usually very lengthy admissions process for Ukraine.
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte also clearly rejected the request of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
"There is no such thing as accelerated accession," he said.
His Luxembourg counterpart, Xavier Bettel, said he was not a rule-freak but there were conditions for joining the EU.
He referred to the Copenhagen criteria.
These include, for example, requirements for democracy, business and the rule of law.
Countries like Estonia and Lithuania, on the other hand, called for concessions.
The Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas told the "Süddeutsche Zeitung" that in her eyes there was a moral obligation "to make it possible for these people to achieve their European dream".
Ukrainians fought not only for Ukraine, but for Europe in the truest sense of the word.
Another hot topic at the two-day summit in the Palace of Versailles is how to deal with the effects of the war on economic development in the EU.
France has brought up the idea of adopting a debt-financed support program, as it did during the corona crisis.
This could therefore help to cushion the consequences of the current increase in energy prices, but also promote investments in defense projects.
Countries like Germany and the Netherlands do not consider this necessary at the moment and point out that the 800 billion euro Corona aid package should first be used up.
You should have read and seen this
The Ukrainian photographer, artist and author Yevgenia Belorusets writes a diary for SPIEGEL from her hometown of Kyiv: »A doctor told me today that she came to work on February 24 and hasn't gone home since«.
You can find the current diary entry here: »He kept breaking out in sobs«
"You told us we weren't allowed to talk about it" - "About what?" - "About our business trip.
What we're doing here«.
A young Russian couple showed their chat messages to SPIEGEL.
She demonstrates that he was sent to war.
You can find the whole article here: Insights into the Putin generation: »Fuck you«
Music as an encourager: a violinist plays in the bomb cellar in Kharkiv, a symphony orchestra on the Maidan in Kyiv and military musicians in Odessa in front of barricades.
You can find the video here: The music is still there
pbe/dpa/Reuters/AFP