President Volodymyr Zelensky has appealed to US President Joe Biden and President of China Xi Jinping to attend his peace summit as Ukraine struggles to stop unrelenting attacks by Russia in its 27-month-old invasion.
Ukraine hopes to host as many countries as possible at Kyiv-led talks in Switzerland next month aimed at uniting global opinion on how to halt the war and increasing pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has not been invited.
Mr Zelensky spoke in an English-language video recorded in the northeastern city of Kharkiv, inside the burnt structure of a printing house that was destroyed on Thursday in a Russian missile strike.
He said more than 80 countries would attend.
Taoiseach Simon Harris said he plans to lead an Irish delegation to the peace summit in Switzerland next month.
Speaking in Co Limerick this afternoon, he said this would provide an opportunity to “pave forward” what peace can look like in Ukraine.
A US official said that the United States will participate in the summit, but declined to say who or at what level.
However, it is unclear whether Beijing, which maintains close ties with Moscow, will attend.
“I am appealing to the leaders of the world who are still aside from the global efforts of the Global Peace Summit – to President Biden, the leader of the United States, and to President Xi, the leader of China,” Mr Zelensky said.
“Please, show your leadership in advancing the peace – the real peace and not just a pause between the strikes,” he said.
Mr Zelensky added the summit would “show who in the world really wants to end the war”.
Kyiv, in its peace plan, calls for a full withdrawal of Russian troops and a restoration of its internationally recognised borders, something Moscow considers a non-starter.
Last week, Russian sources told Reuters that Mr Putin was ready to halt the war in Ukraine with a negotiated ceasefire that recognises the current battlefield lines.
In response, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said the Russian leader was “trying to derail” the Switzerland event because he was “scared of its success”.
“His entourage sends these phony signals of alleged readiness for a ceasefire despite the fact that Russian troops continue to brutally attack Ukraine while their missiles and drones rain down on Ukrainian cities and communities,” he wrote on X.
Russia has previously said it sees no point in Ukraine’s conference.
Russian advances
In recent months Moscow’s forces have made slow but steady gains along several parts of the eastern front and are attempting to push deeper into the northeastern Kharkiv region after a ground incursion launched earlier this month.
In his video address, Mr Zelensky also said Moscow was gathering troops for new “offensive actions” further northwest of Kharkiv along the Russian-Ukrainian border.
Ukraine’s army chief said last week his forces were preparing for a possible Russian assault on the Sumy region that neighbours Kharkiv.
Meanwhile, Russia’s defence ministry said its forces had captured a village in the northeastern Kharkiv region.
Russian troops “as a result of successful combat actions liberated the settlement of Berestove in the Kharkiv region,” the ministry said.
Berestove is located on the eastern front line close to the Lugansk region, which is almost entirely under Russian control.
Russia this month launched an offensive in the north of the Kharkiv region close to the Russian border, making its largest territorial advances for 18 months.
Ukraine said Friday that it had managed to stop Russia from advancing further and was counterattacking, but that Moscow was now intensifying its assault at other parts of the front.
Death toll rises to 11
Kharkiv has been repeatedly hit by Russian bombs and missile strikes, including the attack on the printing house that killed seven and another on a DIY hardware store yesterday that killed at least 14.
The death toll from the Russian strike on the hardware superstore in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv rose to 11, the regional governor said, with Mr Zelensky condemning the attack as “vile”.
“Unfortunately, the death toll at ‘Epitsentr’ has increased to 11 people,” Kharkiv regional governor Oleg Synegubov said on Telegram, referring to the store hit yesterday.
He had previously said six people had “died on the spot”, 40 were wounded and 16 were missing after two guided Russian bombs hit the store.
Two of those killed “were men who worked in the hypermarket”, Mr Synegubov said in a video on Telegram.
The Epitsentr chain sells household and DIY goods.
Still wearing her uniform, Ms Lyubov, a cleaner at the store, recalled how she escaped the building.
“It happened all of a sudden. We didn’t understand at first, everything went dark and everything started falling on our heads,” she said.
“It was good that my phone lit up, thanks to the flashlight I found where to go, but in front of us everything was burning already.”
‘Obviously civilian’ target
“As of now, we know that more than 200 people could have been inside the hypermarket,” Mr Zelensky said yesterday on Telegram, condemning the daylight attack on an “obviously civilian” target.
French President Emmanuel Macron wrote on X that Russia’s strikes on the store were “unacceptable”.
“France shares the pain of the Ukrainians and remains fully mobilised alongside them,” he said.
Russian strikes on a shopping mall in Kharkiv have resulted in many victims, including children, women, men. Families. This is unacceptable.
France shares the grief of the Ukrainians and remains fully mobilized by their side.
— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) May 25, 2024
Russia’s TASS state news agency cited a security source claiming that a missile strike destroyed a “military store and command post” inside the shopping centre.
The regional governor said there was “no contact with some of the staff” and “according to our information, visitors could still be in the building”.
Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, is just a few dozen kilometres from the border and regularly comes under attack from Russian missiles.
Mr Synegubov said the city was under “massive rocket fire all day” yesterday.
Later, another strike hit the centre of Kharkiv, wounding 14 in an area containing a post office, a hairdresser and a cafe, the city’s mayor Igor Terekhov said.
Mr Zelensky visited Kharkiv on Friday and met with officials to discuss the defence of the surrounding region.
He urged world leaders yesterday to supply Ukraine with “sufficient air defence protection” to “prevent such terrorist attacks”.
“Russia struck another brutal blow at our Kharkiv – at a construction hypermarket – on Saturday, right in the middle of the day,” Mr Zelensky said.
“Only madmen like Putin are capable of killing and terrorising people in such a vile way,” he said, referring to the Russian president who ordered his troops into Ukraine in February 2022.
The latest attacks came after Russia launched a ground offensive in the Kharkiv region on 10 May.
Ukraine’s rescue service posted images of firefighters spraying water inside the blazing Epitsentr store building, with the roof torn open and debris strewn around.
They said the fire had raged over an area of 10,000 square metres but that the firefighters had managed to contain it.
“There were a lot of workers and shoppers inside,” Mr Zelensky said.
He said later that the hypermarket had “burned to the ground” and that nearly 60 people had been wounded in Kharkiv throughout the day.
