Ukraine's president made a surprise video appearance Saturday at Qatar's Doha Forum, calling on the energy-rich nation and others to boost their production to counteract the loss of Russian energy supplies.
Volodymyr Zelensky called on the United Nations and world powers to come to his aid, as he has in a series of other addresses given around the world since the start of Russia's military assault on Ukraine on Feb. 24. This time, he urged oil and gas producers to increase output so that Russia cannot use its energy reserves to "blackmail" other nations.
"They can do much to restore justice. The future of Europe depends on your effort. I ask you to increase the output of energy to ensure that everyone in Russia understands that no country can use energy as a weapon and blackmail the world," he said.
The Ukrainian leader called Qatar a "responsible" state and a reliable exporter of energy resources, and said its contributions could help stabilize Europe.
Russian exports of crude oil have fallen because of widespread economic and energy-focused sanctions against the country in response to its invasion of Ukraine.
Zelensky also criticized Russia for what he described as threatening the world with its nuclear weapons, raising the possibility of tactical nuclear weapons being used on the battlefield.
"Russia is deliberating bragging they can destroy with nuclear weapons, not only a certain country but the entire planet," Zelensky said.
He compared Russia's destruction of the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol to the Syrian and Russian destruction wrought on the city of Aleppo in the Syrian war.
"They are destroying our ports," Zelenskyy said. "The absence of exports from Ukraine will deal a blow to countries worldwide."
The loss of Ukrainian wheat already has worried Mideast nations like Egypt, which relies on those exports.
As the misery of war grows more severe in Ukrainian towns and cities, food shortages are mounting in a country once known as the breadbasket for the world.
Mariupol in southern Ukraine has been under siege from Russian forces for more than three weeks, suffering from multiple waves of bombings, which has cut the city's electricity and communication lines as well as food and water supplies. From a pre-invasion population of 430,000, between 100,000 and 150,000 people remain.
Ukraine's Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk on Saturday said civilians trying to leave Mariupol would have to leave in private cars as Russian forces were not letting buses through their checkpoints around the city. Ukraine and Russia have traded blame when humanitarian corridors have failed to work in recent weeks.
Mayor Vadym Boichenko reported street fighting taking place in the centre of Mariupol.
Elsewhere, Russian troops on Saturday seized the town of Slavutych, which is close to the border with Belarus and is where workers at the Chernobyl plant live, the governor of Kyiv region, Oleksandr Pavlyuk, said.
He added that soldiers were occupying a hospital and had kidnapped the mayor. The reports could not be independently verified.
Slavutych sits just outside the so-called exclusion zone around Chernobyl — which in 1986 was the site of the world's worst nuclear disaster — where Ukrainian staff have continued to work even after the plant itself was seized by Russian forces soon after the start of the invasion.
