Ukraine doesn't want to "give up on Donbas and Crimea" - Zelenskyy presidential adviser | DW News

The Red Cross says its convoy of buses and aid has not yet made it to Mariupol to help evacuate civilians from the city that's been besieged by Russian forces for weeks. Earlier, the city council suggested that the first evacuations had taken place in buses belonging to the International Committee of the Red Cross. Reporting from Ukraine, DW's Correspondent Rebecca Ritters explained: "The ICRC team said they were on their way to facilitate the safe passage of civilians to Zaporizhzhia, a Ukrainian-held town just north of Mariupol. But they had to turn around because arrangements and conditions made it impossible to proceed." "We had heard that 2,000 people were going to be evacuated today. Unfortunately, that's not true," Ritters added. But she said that more than 1,400 people had left the city by private vehicle on Thursday. The Red Cross convoy also includes desperately-needed humanitarian supplies, which have still not made it the city. Mariupol residents have been without power and communications for several weeks and food supplies have run low.

Kyiv has denied responsibility for a blaze at a fuel depot in the Russian city of Belgorod, which Moscow said was caused by a Ukrainian air strike. Russia's Defence Ministry said that two Ukrainian helicopters struck the facility, which lies some 35 kilometers (22 miles) from the joint border, and is one of Russia's main logistics hubs for the war. Moscow said the choppers entered Russian territory at an extremely low altitude at around 5 a.m. Moscow time (0200 UTC) on Friday, but Ukraine's top security official rebuffed the accusation. "For some reason, they say that we did it, but according to our information, this does not correspond to reality," Security Council Secretary Oleksiy Danilov said on Ukrainian national television. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russian President Vladimir Putin had been briefed about the incident and that the strike could harm peace talks between Moscow and Kyiv.

Ukraine doesn't want to "give up on Donbas and Crimea," during peace talks with Russia, Liubov Tsybulska, an expert in hybrid warfare and an adviser to the Ukrainian government told DW. Tsybulska said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's position was to "talk about this in a few years and solve it in a diplomatic way." She rejected the idea that taking control of the Donbas region has been the goal of Russian President Vladimir Putin all along. "They [the Russians] don't need Donbas at all," she said. "They were controlling Donbas — Donetsk and Luhansk — for eight years. It's not their intention to get these territories." Russia says Kyiv has agreed to cede sovereignty of Donbas and Crimea as well as not seek NATO membership, but Ukraine's government has denied those claims.

Tsybulska said that Russian President Vladimir Putin's real strategy is "about controlling Ukrainians." She said Russia's claim that it was easing military activity around Kyiv was a ploy so they can regroup their forces, especially considering that "Russia is suffering very heavy losses, human losses, equipment and so on."

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