Presidency of Ukraine / Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Tuesday that the "responsibility" for the deaths of Ukrainians amid the Russian invasion lies with Western governments as he renewed calls for them to close the skies over the eastern European country.
Zelensky also said in his video message that a child in the besieged city of Mariupol died of dehydration and that Russian forces had blocked the delivery of food and water supply and cut off electricity.
"The blame for every death of every person in Ukraine from air strikes and in blocked cities, of course, lies with the Russian state, the Russian military, those who give and those who carry out criminal orders, who violate all the rules of warfare, who deliberately exterminate the Ukrainian people," Zelensky said.
However, he added, "The responsibility for this lies also with those who have not been able to make an obviously necessary decision somewhere in the West … those who have not yet secured the Ukrainian sky from Russian murderers."
"Those who did not save our cities from air strikes. From these bombs, missiles," he added. "Although they can."
Zelensky has repeatedly called for NATO leaders to impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine.
NATO has said that establishing a no-fly zone would escalate the Russian invasion of Ukraine, turning it into "a full-fledged war in Europe, involving many more countries and causing much more human suffering."
In his message on Tuesday, Zelensky said, "Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people in the cities are on the verge of life and death" as Russian forces carry out military strikes on Ukrainian cities.
He said that the city of Mariupol "is being deliberately exhausted," "deliberately tortured," and "cut off" from communication, electricity, and the deliveries of food and water.
"In Mariupol, for the first time in dozens of years, perhaps for the first time since the Nazi invasion, a child died of dehydration," Zelensky said. "A child died of dehydration. In 2022!"
Meanwhile, Ukraine said Russian forces shelled a humanitarian corridor between the city of Zaporizhzhia to Mariupol it promised not to attack on Tuesday.
Ukraine's military wrote in a Facebook post that "the invaders did not let children, women, elderly people out of the city. The enemy started the attack exactly in the direction of the humanitarian corridor."
Russia invaded Ukraine in the early morning hours of February 24, and Zelensky said Tuesday that Ukrainian forces "destroy the invaders wherever we can."
"But they still have enough machinery to kill," he said. "There are still enough missiles for terror."
