Metro Observer Daily

  April 24 (Reuters) – No humanitarian routes were established out of the southeastern Ukrainian port city of Mariupol on Sunday, Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said, blaming Russian forces for not holding their fire. Vereshchuk said that the Ukrainian side would try again on Monday to establish safe passage out of Mariupol. She called for U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres, who is scheduled to travel to Moscow before visiting Kyiv next week, to demand a ceasefire and open up humanitarian corridors from Mariupol. “This is what Guterres should talk about in Moscow, if he is preparing to talk about peace,” Vereshchuk said.

  KYIV, April 24 (Reuters) – Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Sunday that he had talked with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the eve of the Turkish president’s talks with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. Zelenskiy said he and Erdogan discussed the need for the immediate evacuation of civilians from the mostly Russian-occupied port city of Mariupol, including the surrounded but Ukrainian-held Azovstal factory, and the exchange of Ukrainian troops holed up at the plant.