“We must not humiliate Russia so that the day when the fighting stops we can build an exit ramp through diplomatic means,” Macron told regional newspapers in an interview published on Saturday, adding he was “convinced that it is France’s role to be a mediating power.”
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba tweeted in response: “Calls to avoid humiliation of Russia can only humiliate France and every other country that would call for it.
“Because it is Russia that humiliates itself. We all better focus on how to put Russia in its place. This will bring peace and save lives.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy offered a stark message: “The terrible consequences of this war can be stopped at any moment … if one person in Moscow simply gives the order,” he said, in an apparent reference to Russian President Vladimir Putin. “And the fact that there is still no such order is obviously a humiliation for the whole world.”
‘NO POINT’ IN NEGOTIATIONS
Putin will discuss the war in an interview due to be broadcast on national television on Sunday. In a brief excerpt aired on Saturday he said Russian antiaircraft forces have shot down dozens of Ukrainian weapons and are “cracking them like nuts”.
Ukraine says it aims to push Russian forces back as far as possible on the battlefield, counting on advanced missile systems pledged in recent days by the United States and Britain to swing the war in its favour.
Asked about Macron’s mediation offer on national television, Zelenskiy adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said there was “no point in holding negotiations” until Ukraine received all the pledged weapons, strengthened its position and pushed Russian forces “back as far as possible to the borders of Ukraine”.
Moscow has said the Western weapons will pour “fuel on the fire” but will not change the course of what it calls a “special military operation” to disarm Ukraine and rid it of nationalists.
Russia’s defence ministry said its troops were forcing the Ukrainians to withdraw across the Siverskiy Donets River to Lysychansk on the opposite bank.
Serhiy Gaidai, governor of Ukraine’s Luhansk province, which includes Sievierodonetsk, said Ukrainian forces previously in control of just 30% of the city had mounted a counter-attack, recapturing another 20% of it.
Gaidai said the Russians were blowing up bridges across the river to prevent Ukraine from bringing in military reinforcements and delivering aid to civilians in Sievierodonetsk.
“The Russian army, as we understand, is throwing all its efforts, all its reserves in that direction,” Gaidai said in a live TV broadcast.
Tens of thousands are believed to have died, millions have been uprooted from their homes, and the global economy has been disrupted in a war that marked its 100th day on Friday.
Ukraine is one of the world’s leading sources of grain and cooking oil, but those supplies were largely cut off by Russia’s closure of its Black Sea ports, with more than 20 million tonnes of grain stuck in silos.
Reuters