As the Red Cross renewed efforts to evacuate citizens from the besieged city of Mariupol, Pope Francis on Saturday called Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as “infantile.”
Speaking during a visit to Malta, the pontiff criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin and his attempt to seize territory from Ukraine.
“Once again, some potentate, sadly caught up in anachronistic claims of nationalist interests, is provoking and fomenting conflicts, whereas ordinary people sense the need to build a future that, will either be shared, or not be at all,” the pope said, the Independent reported.
A short time later, the Pope told reporters on his plane that a trip to Kyiv is “on the table,” but provided no further details.
The comments came as the Red Cross sent another convoy to the encircled southern port city Mariupol, battered by continuous shelling since the invasion began five weeks ago.
Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said seven new evacuation corridors were opened on Saturday, including one that would allow the battered residents of Mariupol to escape to the town of Zaporizhzhya, and others for nearby towns, along with towns in the eastern separatist regions Russia claims.
Vereshchuk said 6,266 people evacuated from cities on Friday, including 771 from Mariupol. Tens of thousands are still trapped there with little access to food and water.
Ukraine and Russia have announced multiple agreements for civilian evacuations and humanitarian aid shipments over the past several weeks, but the convoys of both have been stymied. The buses meant for evacuations have frequently been turned away from military checkpoints, while food, water and medical supplies have reportedly been confiscated by troops.
Russia has changed tactics in recent days after failing to take a major Ukranian city in the first month of the war. Troops seem to be withdrawing from the suburbs surrounding the capital Kyiv and the focus has shifted to the eastern region, known as the Donbas, that includes two states where Russian-backed separatists have fought Ukranian troops since 2014.
Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed that as they retreat, Russian forces are leaving mines and booby traps behind, around homes, abandoned equipment and even corpses.
“It’s still not possible to return to normal life, as it used to be, even at the territories that we are taking back after the fighting,” Zelensky said in his nightly video message. “We need wait until our land is demined, wait till we are able to assure you that there won’t be new shelling.”
Separately, Russian forces said they struck the last operational oil refinery in the country, in Kremenchuk, about 180 miles southeast of Kyiv.
Russian defense ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said the refinery was hit by “high-precision long-range air and sea-based weapons.” The strike destroyed storage facilities holding gasoline and diesel fuels that were supplying Ukrainian troops in the country’s central and eastern regions, HE SAID.
The attack came a day after Russia accused Ukraine of sending helicopters over the border to bomb a Russian oil depot, which Ukraine denied.
Russia also struck military airfields in Poltava and Dnipro, cities to the east of Kremenchuk, using high-precision air-based missiles, Konashenkov said, CNN reported.
In other developments:
-Russia’s ambassador to the UK said it would consider British artillery and anti-ship weapons “legitimate targets” if they are sent to the Ukrainian military. “Any weapon deliveries are destabilizing,” Ambassador Andrei Kelin told Russian state news agency TASS. “They exacerbate the situation and make it bloodier.”
-Ukrainian war photographer Maksym Levin, 40, became the eighth journalist known killed in the war when his body was found near a village north of Kyiv by police, his employer LB.ua said. He had not been heard from since March 13. Ukrainian presidential aide Andriy Yermak confirmed in a Telegram post that Levin’s “body was found near the village of Guta Mezhygirska on April 1, the BBC reported.
-Ukraine accused Russia of “kidnapping” another government official, this time the deputy mayor of a town in the besieged Sumy region near the Russian border, in the north. Oleksiy Shibayev, deputy mayor of Nova Sloboda, was accompanying an aid delivery that was stopped by Russian troops at a checkpoint Friday.
-The death toll from a rocket strike Tuesday on a government building in the Black Sea port of Mykolaiv rose to 33, along with 34 injured. Rescue workers are continuing to search the rubble and remove corpses from the scene.
With Post Wires