UN warns of traffickers exploiting chaotic exodus from Ukraine as 1.5 million children forced to flee

An estimated 1.5m youngsters have been forced from their homes in Ukraine risking an international child protection crisis, Unicef warned yesterday.

The United Nations’ children’s agency fears human traffickers and predators will target young people separated from their families during the chaotic exodus from the warzone.

It emerged yesterday that almost half of the 3.3 million refugees fleeing Ukraine since Russian forces invaded three weeks ago are children as the country’s president Volodymyr Zelensky accused the Kremlin of deliberately creating “a humanitarian catastrophe”.

He appeared in a video shot on the streets of capital Kyiv to claim Russia was trying to starve his country into submission. However, he warned continuing the invasion will cost Russia dearly and called on Putin to meet him to forge a peace deal and prevent more bloodshed.

He said: “The time has come to restore territorial integrity and justice for Ukraine. Otherwise, Russia’s costs will be so high that you will not be able to rise again for several generations.”

Zelensky urged Putin to meet him face to face, and, referring to the huge stadium rally where Putin praised the bravery of Russian soldiers on Friday, said: “Just picture for yourself in that stadium in Moscow there are 14,000 dead bodies and tens of thousands more injured and maimed. Those are the Russian costs throughout the invasion.”

Putin’s rally took place after Russia endured far heavier than expected losses on the battlefield and increasingly authoritarian rule at home. According to the Ukrainian armed forces’ latest figures, 14,400 Russian troops have been killed so far in the war. It also claimed 95 aircraft, 115 helicopters and 466 tanks have been destroyed.

Zelensky said Russian forces are blockading the largest cities and attempting to freeze and starve Ukrainians into submission but, he said, Ukraine will fight on. He is urging Putin to hold face-to-face talks days after speculation that progress was being made in peace talks. He said: “It’s time to meet, it’s time to talk, it’s time to restore territorial integrity and justice for Ukraine.”

However, many observers fear Moscow is not serious about seeking agreement and will use negotiations as a smokescreen as forces continue to shell and bomb towns and cities, inflicting devastation across Ukraine.

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British intelligence suggests Russia is intent on a war of attrition, having failed to rapidly conquer its western neighbour. “This is likely to involve the indiscriminate use of firepower resulting in increased civilian casualties, destruction of Ukrainian infrastructure, and intensifying the humanitarian crisis,” the UK Ministry of Defence said.

Meanwhile, former prime minister Gordon Brown escalated his international campaign for special tribunals to investigate and prosecute Russian war crimes as the United Nations said at least 847 civilians, including 64 children, have been killed since the invasion. Officials said the true toll is likely to be far higher. Another 1,399 civilians, including 78 children, have been injured, mostly by shelling and airstrikes.

Fighting continued across Ukraine yesterday but 10 humanitarian corridors were established for aid and refugees, including one from the besieged and battered port city of Mariupol and several around capital Kyiv.

Ukrainian deputy prime minister Iryna Vereshchuk said evacuation corridors in the Kyiv and Luhansk regions were open, but a planned corridor to Mariupol was only partially operating. She blamed Russian troops for not letting buses through as invasion forces pushed deeper into Mariupol, a key strategic target for Putin where heavy fighting shut down a steel plant and authorities appealed for more Western help.

More than 1,000 people are thought to be trapped inside the rubble of the bombed Donetsk Regional Theatre of Drama in Mariupol, which was hit on Wednesday. Rescue workers are still searching in the wreckage, with at least 130 freed so far, but street fighting was hampering rescue efforts yesterday.

“Children, elderly people are dying. The city is destroyed and it is wiped off the face of the earth,” Mariupol police officer Michail Vershnin said in a video addressed to Western leaders. His city has suffered unimaginable damage under a Russian rain of missiles and shells. More than 4,000 residents managed to flee the city yesterday but around 300,000 remain trapped as food and medicine runs out. Officials estimate about 80% of homes are damaged or destroyed, a third of them beyond repair.

Russian forces have already cut the city off from the Sea of Azov, and its fall would link Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, to territories controlled by Moscow-backed separatists in the east. It would mark a rare advance in the face of fierce Ukrainian resistance that has dashed Russia’s hopes for a quick victory and galvanized the West.

US President Joe Biden warned Chinese President Xi Jinping in a two-hour call on Friday of the consequences facing Beijing if it provides material support to Russia. According to the White House, Biden “described the implications and consequences if China provides material support to Russia as it conducts brutal attacks against Ukrainian cities and civilians,” while underscoring US support for a “diplomatic resolution to the crisis”.

“China has to make a decision for themselves where they stand,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said.

But Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov claimed yesterday Russia’s relationship with China will only become closer. He said: “This co-operation will get stronger, because at a time when the West is blatantly undermining all the foundations on which the international system is based, of course we – as two great powers – need to think how to carry on in this world.”

In a speech to the Tory spring conference in Blackpool yesterday, Boris Johnson described the war as a “turning point for the world”, forcing countries to stand up to Russia rather than “making accommodations with tyranny”. Defence Secretary Ben Wallace, addressing the conference, said Putin has made a series of catastrophic errors: “The Kremlin assumed that Ukraine would not fight – he was wrong. The Kremlin assumed his army was invincible – they were wrong. And they assumed the international community would splinter and they’ve been proven wrong.”

In other developments, the Home Office said 8,600 visas had been issued under the Ukraine family scheme by Friday evening.

Ukraine’s ambassador to the UK Vadym Prystaiko that London-based consumer giant Unilever should close its operations in Russia. Meanwhile, Russia has claimed it has deployed hypersonic missiles in Ukraine.

It said it destroyed an underground warehouse storing missiles and ammunition of Ukrainian troops in the western Ivano-Frankivsk region.

President Zelensky also called on Swiss banks to take tougher action against Russian oligarchs. In a video to thousands of people at an anti-war protest in Bern, he thanked Switzerland for its support since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but called for more action from the financial sector with the country’s banks holding up to £161bn of Russian wealth.

He said: “Your banks are where the money of the people who unleashed this war lies. That is painful. That is also a fight against evil, that their accounts are frozen. That would also be a fight, and you can do this.

“Ukrainians feel what it is when cities are destroyed. They are being destroyed on the orders of people who live in Europe, in beautiful Swiss towns, who enjoy property in your cities. It would really be good to strip them of this privilege.”