Russia-Ukraine crisis: Russian diplomat says no point in ceasefire at the moment

A senior Russian diplomat said on Monday that there was no point in having a ceasefire in Ukraine at this stage because Kyiv was likely to use it as an opportunity to try to discredit Russia, after Kyiv denied reaching an agreement with Moscow over a humanitarian corridor.

“Ukraine is undermining our efforts to open humanitarian corridors so we don’t think a ceasefire is a good option now,” RIA quoted Dmitry Polyanskiy, Russia’s first deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, as saying.

Ukraine earlier denied reaching a deal with Russia on evacuating civilians from a steel plant in the southern city of Mariupol, and said the United Nations should be the “initiator and guarantor” of any such deal.

Polyanskiy said a ceasefire would only “be an opportunity for Ukrainian forces to regroup and stage more provocations.”

He said Russia had not struck any residential areas in Ukraine’s Black Sea port city of Odesa. Ukraine’s southern air command on Saturday said that two missiles struck a military facility and two residential buildings in Odesa.

Polyanskiy did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Russia had said earlier on Monday that it would open a humanitarian corridor for civilians to leave Mariupol’s huge Azovstal steel plant, where they are holed up with Ukrainian fighters and are under Russian fire.

“Today, the Russian side once again announced the existence of a corridor for civilians to leave Azovstal. This could be believed if the Russians had not destroyed humanitarian corridors many times before,” Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk wrote on the Telegram messaging app.

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