Moscow sets 5 a.m. Monday deadline for Ukraine to surrender Mariupol; Ukraine declines

MOSCOW — Russia’s defense ministry issued an ultimatum late Sunday to those people who remain hunkered down in the besieged eastern Ukrainian port city of Mariupol.

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“Lay down your arms… A terrible humanitarian catastrophe has developed… All who lay down their arms are guaranteed safe passage out of Mariupol,” Col.-Gen. Mikhail Mizintsev, director of the Russian National Defense Management Center, said during a Sunday news briefing, The Guardian reported.

According to the BBC, Mizintsev has offered to open humanitarian corridors on Monday morning from Mariupol, going east and west out of the port city, but “safe passage” is predicated on all Ukrainian troops and “foreign mercenaries” laying down their arms and leaving by 5 a.m. Moscow time.

Once the surrender of Mariupol is complete, Mizintsev said that humanitarian evacuation corridors would be opened at 10 a.m. Moscow time, followed by the granting of “safe passage” for humanitarian convoys carrying food, medicine and other supplies into the city from both directions beginning at noon Moscow time, the BBC reported.

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

According to the BBC, Vereshchuk stated early Monday that there can be “no question” of surrender.

“We have already informed the Russian side about this,” she was quoted as saying by Ukrainska Pravda, the BBC reported.

As it stands, Mizintsev stated in his address that as many as 130,000 civilians are being “held hostage” in the port city, but they will be released to evacuate either east or west if Kyiv accepts the terms by the 5 a.m. Moscow time deadline.

Previous efforts to evacuate civilians from Mariupol quickly broke down when Russia resumed shelling, driving thousands of residents underground, where they have scarce access to food, water and medical supplies, the BBC reported.

Meanwhile, Mariupol’s city council warned Saturday that thousands of the city’s residents are 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 forcibly captured people,” Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boychenko said Saturday, according to the Mariupol City Council’s official Telegram channel.

“It is difficult 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 deporting Mariupol residents,” Boychenko added.

Mariupol’s city council members said several thousand residents were captured in a sports hall where they had been sheltering and taken to “filtration camps,” where their phones and documents were inspected before they were dispatched to remote Russian cities, the Post reported.

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

The claims about Ukrainians being forcibly deported could not be independently verified Sunday by the Post, The Guardian or the BBC.

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