Russo-Ukrainian War: What We Know About Day 26 of the Invasion | Russia

Ukraine has rejected a Russian request for Mariupol to surrender at 5:00 a.m. Moscow time (02:00 GMT / 22:00 ET) on Monday. Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said there could be “no surrender” and that Russia had been informed of the response.
Russian Colonel Mikhail Mizintsev had told the city’s defenders to “Lay Down Arms”. At a briefing on Sunday, he added that if Mariupol residents surrender, then humanitarian corridors would be opened in the east and west directions from 10 a.m. Moscow time on Monday.
US President Joe Biden will visit Poland this week to discuss international efforts to support Ukraine and “impose severe and unprecedented costs on Russia” for its invasion, the White House said. Discussions will follow Biden’s meetings in Brussels with NATO allies, G7 leaders and EU leaders.
Biden will host a call Monday at 3 p.m. GMT (11 a.m. ET) with President Emmanuel Macron of France, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi of Italy and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he believed a failure to negotiate an end to the Russian invasion would mean “a Third World War”. He told CNN he was “ready for negotiations” with Russian President Vladimir Putin and that “we must use any format, any chance to have a chance to negotiate”.
Zelenskiy previously called Putin’s strategy a “final solution” for Ukraine. In an uncompromising speech to the Israeli parliament, the Ukrainian president challenged Israel for its failure to impose sanctions on Russia.
At least four people were killed following shelling of homes and a shopping district in kyiv, according to Reuters, citing the state emergency service. Video showed firefighters rushing to rescue people trapped in the rubble of the Retroville shopping center in Podilskiy.
Ukrainian human rights spokeswoman Lyudmyla Denisova said Russian troops had “kidnapped” residents and taken them to Russia. “Several thousand residents of Mariupol have been deported to Russia,” she said on Telegram. After being treated in “filtration camps”, some had been transported to the Russian city of Taganrog, about 100 km from Mariupol, and from there sent by rail “to various economically disadvantaged cities in Russia”, a- she declared.
The Mariupol city council said Russia bombed an art school where 400 civilians, including children, had taken refuge. Petro Andrushenko, an adviser to the city’s mayor, said there was no exact number of casualties. “The city continues to be bombarded both from the air and from the sea,” Andrushenko said on Telegram.
Ten million people – more than a quarter of the population – have now fled their homes in Ukraine due to Russia’s “devastating” war, the head of the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, said on Sunday. And at least 902 civilians were killed and 1,459 injured in Ukraine on Saturday at midnight local time, the UN human rights office said. According to the Ukrainian parliament, 115 Ukrainian children were killed and at least 140 others were injured.
China’s ambassador to the United States said his country does not send weapons to Russia for use in Ukraine. He said China was sending food, sleeping bags and other aid, “not arms and ammunition to any party.” But when pressed on US television on Sunday, he did not definitively rule out the possibility of Beijing doing so in the future.
Germany has concluded a contract with Qatar for the supply of liquefied natural gas (LNG) which will help the European country to wean itself off its dependence on Russian energy. It could take several years for the agreement to come into full effect as Germany has no terminals for LNG delivery. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia said it was increasing its oil production to meet global demand.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu says a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine is ‘close’, despite the skepticism of Western governments. But the US ambassador to the United Nations warned on Sunday that there was little immediate hope for a negotiated end to the war.
Eleven Ukrainian political parties have been suspended due to their links with Russia, according to Zelensky. The country’s National Security and Defense Council took the decision to ban political parties from engaging in political activity. Most of the parties involved were small, but one of them, the opposition Platform for Life, holds 44 seats in Ukraine’s parliament, which has 450.