MOSCOW, April 27 (NNN-AGENCIES) — UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for Moscow and Kyiv to work together to set up aid and evacuation corridors in war-torn Ukraine, during a visit to Russia.
“We urgently need humanitarian corridors that are truly safe and effective,” he told a press conference after talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
“To that end I have proposed the establishment of a humanitarian contact group bringing together the Russian Federation, Ukraine and the United Nations to look for opportunities for the opening of safe corridors,” he said.
Guterres also called for an independent investigation into “possible war crimes” in Ukraine.
“I am concerned about the repeated reports of violations of international humanitarian and human rights law and possible war crimes. And they require independent investigation for effective accountability,” Guterres said.
Lavrov said Moscow was ready to cooperate with the United Nations to help civilians in Ukraine.
“Our goals are primarily to protect the civilian population and here we are ready to cooperate with our colleagues from the UN to alleviate the plight of the civilian population,” Lavrov said.
EARLIER, speaking to Russian news agencies, Lavrov said that peace talks with Ukraine would continue, while warning there was a “real” danger of World War III.
He criticized Kyiv’s approach to the talks, adding, “Good will has its limits. But if it isn’t reciprocal, that doesn’t help the negotiation process. But we are continuing to engage in negotiations with the team delegated by [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelenskyy, and these contacts will go on.”
But Lavrov accused former actor Zelenskyy of “pretending” to negotiate.
“He’s a good actor,” he said. “If you watch attentively and read attentively what he says, you’ll find a thousand contradictions.”
Given the current tensions, Lavrov said the danger of a World War III was “real”. Russia, Lavrov said, was doing a lot to uphold the principle of striving to prevent nuclear war at all costs.
“This is our key position on which we base everything. The risks now are considerable,” Lavrov said. “I would not want to elevate those risks artificially. Many would like that. The danger is serious, real. And we must not underestimate it.”
Of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, he said he was confident that “everything will of course finish with the signing of an accord.
“But the parameters of this accord will be defined by the state of the fighting that will have taken place at the moment the accord becomes reality,” he added.
In other development, KYIV began demolishing a monument symbolizing historic ties between ex-Soviet Ukraine and Russia.
“We are removing the bronze sculpture of two workers installed in the center of the capital in 1982 ‘to commemorate the reunification of Ukraine with Russia’,” Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said in a statement on social media.
“The dismantling has started today and we plan to finish it this evening,” he added. “And what is symbolic is that when they tried to lift the sculpture with a crane, the head of a Russian worker fell off.”
He explained the decision citing what he called Moscow’s “barbaric desire to destroy our state and peaceful Ukrainians,” with the full-scale offensive launched on Feb 24.
Klitschko said a second component of the sculpture would be removed later and the giant arch above the workers would be renamed and illuminated with the colors of the Ukrainian flag.
He said city authorities were working on plans to demolish around 60 monuments in the capital related to Russia and the Soviet Union.
Klitschko added, some 460 streets and other objects in the city are slated for renaming.
Since Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine in 2014 and Moscow threw its political clout behind separatists in the east of the country, Kyiv has worked to remove Soviet symbols from the country in a program of “de-communization”. — NNN-AGENCIES
