Victory over Russia will be won through diplomacy, says Zelensky – live

Ukraine’s bloody battle to victory against Russia’s invasion will be hard won through diplomacy, said Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky in an interview marking the third anniversary of his inauguration.

“Victory will be bloody in battle. But the end will be in diplomacy. We want everything back. Russia does not want to give anything away,” Mr Zelensky said in the interview on Friday that was released on Saturday.

Mariupol is facing a health and sanitation “catastrophe” from mass burials in shallow pits across the ruined city as well as the breakdown of sewage systems, its mayor said on Saturday.

Vadim Boychenko said summer rains threaten to contaminate water sources as he pressed Russian forces to allow residents to safely leave the city.

“In addition to the humanitarian catastrophe created by the (Russian) occupiers and collaborators, the city is on the verge of an outbreak of infectious diseases,” he said on the messaging app Telegram.

Earlier this week, Russia claimed to have taken full control of Mariupol.

The Russian defence ministry on Saturday released video of Russian troops taking into custody Serhiy Volynskyy, the commander of the Ukrainian Navy’s 36th Special Marine Brigade, which was one of the main forces defending the Azov steel plant.

The Ukrainian military has reported heavy fighting in much of the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine.

“The situation in Donbas is extremely difficult,” president Volodymyr Zelensky said in his nightly video address on Saturday.

“As in previous days, the Russian army is trying to attack Sloviansk and Sievierodonetsk.”

He said Ukrainian forces are holding off the offensive “every day”.

Sievierodonetsk is the main city under Ukrainian control in the Luhansk region while Sloviansk, in the Donetsk region, is critical to Russia’s objective of capturing all of eastern Ukraine.

Polish president Andrzej Duda arrived in Ukraine on Saturday on an unannounced visit.

He will address the Ukrainian parliament on Sunday.Poland, which has welcomed millions of Ukrainian refugees since the start of the war, is a strong supporter of Ukraine’s desire to join the European Union.

Poland has also become a major gateway for western humanitarian aid and weapons going into Ukraine and has been helping Ukraine get its grain and other agricultural products to world markets.

With Russia claiming to have taken prisoner nearly 2,500 Ukrainian fighters from the besieged Mariupol steel plant, concerns have grown about their fate.

Denis Pushilin, the pro-Kremlin head of an area of eastern Ukraine controlled by Moscow-backed separatists, said the captured fighters included some foreign nationals, though he did not provide any details, reported Associated Press.

He said they were sure to face a tribunal.

“I believe that justice must be restored. There is a request for this from ordinary people, society, and, probably, the sane part of the world community,” Russian state news agency Tass quoted Mr Pushilin as saying.

The family members of the captured fighters have pleaded for them to be given rights as prisoners of war and eventually returned to Ukraine.

Deputy prime minister Iryna Vereshchuk said on Saturday that Ukraine “will fight for the return” of every one of them.

Russia intends to study the possibility of a prisoners’ exchange, between Ukrainian fighters in Mariupol’s Azov steel plant and Viktor Medvedchuk, president Vladimir Putin’s ally who has been held by Ukrainian forces.

“We will study the possibility of exchanging Medvedchuk for the Azov people. We are not the Liberal Democratic Party, but those people in Moscow who have such powers,” said Leonid Slutsky, a member of the negotiation process, chairman of the State Duma Committee on International Affairs, reported Interfax news agency.

According to the Russian defence ministry, since 16 May, 2,439 people from the Ukrainian Azov regiment and military personnel of the Ukrainian armed forces have surrendered at the Azovstal plant in Mariupol.

Russia has said that due to the sanctions imposed by western countries for its invasion of Ukraine, Moscow is using new logistic corridors.

Russian transport minister Vitaly Savelyev said that Western sanctions have forced Russia “to look for new logistics corridors,” Russian media Meduza reported.

Russia will now rely more heavily on the North-South transport corridor to move freight, Mr Savelyev was quoted as saying.

Ukraine on Saturday ruled out agreeing to a ceasefire with Russia and said Kyiv would not accept any deal with Moscow that involved ceding territory.

Acknowledging that Kyiv’s stance on the war was becoming more uncompromising, presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said making concessions would backfire on Ukraine because Russia would hit back harder after any break in fighting.

“The war will not stop (after any concessions). It will just be put on pause for some time,” he told Reuters in an interview in the heavily guarded presidential office, where some of the windows and corridors are protected by sandbags.

“After a while, with renewed intensity, the Russians will build up their weapons, manpower and work on their mistakes, modernise a little, fire many generals … And they’ll start a new offensive, even more bloody and large-scale.”

Podolyak dismissed as “very strange” calls in the West for an urgent ceasefire that would involve Russian forces remaining in territory they have occupied in Ukraine’s south and east.

“The (Russian) forces must leave the country and after that the resumption of the peace process will be possible,” he said.

A Ukrainian director has criticised the Cannes Film Festival for including a Russian director in its line-up, as the debut filmmaker’s ‘Pamfir’ was shown at the annual event’s Directors Fortnight on Saturday.

The festival has banned official Russian delegations from attending, but Russian dissident Kirill Serebrennikov, who has spoken out against the invasion of Ukraine, premiered his in-competition film “Tchaikovsky’s Wife” at the festival on Wednesday.

“When he’s here, he is part of the Russian propaganda, and they can use him,” Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk told Reuters.