the times | Monday May 2 2022 2GM 11
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feels about her decision is obvious from
her voice. “A lot of people are judging
me now,” she says. “I get messages say-
ing, ‘How could you do it? How could
you leave your parents?’ For some
people it’s hard to understand. But try
to imagine — I was there, a woman on
her own, with two kids and two deaf
people.”
Four days later she got word that her
parents were, at least, alive, but then
there was no more news. In Germany,
Shumeiko found herself safe, but un-
able to work — the Russian and
Ukrainian sign language that she
knows are completely different from
the German kind. And she heard
alarming stories about another, young-
er deaf couple in the city who were said
to have disappeared.
It was only through the video of her
mother that she learnt that her house
had been burnt out in the continuing
battle, but that her parents were alive. “Iheard that the building next door was
completely smashed, down to the
ground. For three weeks, they didn’t go
out of the basement. There are injured
people there, a lot of children.”
The man who shot the film promised
to take food yesterday, but that is no
more than a temporary solution.
“Now the challenge is to get them
out,” Shumeiko says. “But my parents
can’t pick up on the chat, the rumours
and gossip. I don’t know how to do it.”Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor,
has defended himself against accusa-
tions of dithering and cowardice over
his reluctance to supply heavy arms to
Ukraine.
Disarray over weapon shipments has
prompted fierce international and
domestic criticism, undermining
Scholz’s popularity.
“I make my decisions quickly — and
in concert with our allies. I am suspi-
cious of hasty action and Germany
going it alone,” he told Bild am Sonntag.
Scholz, 63, began the year by oppos-
ing providing any arms to Ukraine but
shifted his position, amid widespread
criticism, three days after Russian’s in-
vasion to allow shipments of anti-tank
weapons.
Over recent weeks he opposed calls
for supplies of heavy weaponry before
allowing a shipment of Gepard self-
propelled anti-aircraft guns last Tues-
day, following America’s lead.
The Social Democrat chancellor is
now under pressure to follow other
western countries by clearing ship-
ments of Leopard battle tanks, Marder
armoured vehicles and self-propelled
howitzers.
Friedrich Merz, 66, the Christian
Democrat leader, accused him of hesi-
tancy and being too wary of angering
Russia. “That’s hesitation, that’s pro-
crastination, that’s anxiety,” he said.
Andriy Melnyk, Ukraine’s ambassa-Germans lose faith in
Scholz over arms help
Bruno Waterfield dor to Berlin, a regular and trenchant
critic, accused Scholz of being blink-
ered and cowardly. “What is missing is
imagination and courage,” he said.
Scholz’s reluctance is damaging his
popularity during his first six months in
office. An Insa opinion poll for Bild
found that 54 per cent of Germans were
dissatisfied with his government as
support for the Social Democrats
(SPD) fell to 23 per cent.
The SPD has also been damaged by
Gerhard Schröder, 78, the party’s last
chancellor, who has failed to condemn
the Russian invasion or to sever his
close links to Putin.
He has refused to give up his senior
role at Gazprom, the Russian gas giant,
and now faces the possibility of losing
his perks as a former German leader,
including offices in the German parlia-
ment and a budget for staff worth
€400,000 a year.
EU wrangling over oil sanctions will
come to a head this week when the
European Commission tables plans to
phase out imports. Hungary, Austria,
Slovakia, Spain, Italy and Greece are
attempting to slow the process down.
Mediterranean countries fear that
switching to other oil supplies will push
up energy prices while the central
Europeans claim it is difficult to com-
pletely phase out oil imports.
“We must not impose sanctions that
primarily punish ourselves and not
those we want to sanction,” said Gerge-
ly Gulyas, a Hungarian minister.are wounded, some with gangrene. “As
for the wounded — those people who
require urgent medical care — it is
unclear to us why they are not being
evacuated and their evacuation to the
territory controlled by Ukraine is not
being discussed,” Palamar said.
“I emphasise that we ask to guaran-
tee the evacuation not just for civilians
but also for our wounded servicemen
who require medical care.” There are
said to be up to 1,000 civilians in the
steelworks, many of them families of
the soldiers. If they are evacuated, the
question then is what will happen to
about 2,000 defenders in positions in
the surface buildings and tunnels.
President Putin told his defence min-
ister not to assault the plant to prevent
loss of life but ordered that “not even aEvacuees were taken to a village in Donbas. Left, a father and son are reunited
fly” should be allowed out. The Rus-
sians may simply wait for the Ukrainian
forces to run out of food and ammuni-
tion. A plan to evacuate civilians from
areas of Mariupol outside of the
Azovstal steel works was postponed to
5am GMT today, Mariupol’s city
council said.
International pressure to extract the
civilians has been growing. The Pope
has gone so far as to propose that they
be allowed to leave by ship through the
Sea of Azov, under a Vatican flag. He
called the war yesterday a “macabre
regression of humanity”.
During the weekly Angelus prayer in
St Peter’s Square he said: “Let us never
abdicate in the face of the logic of
violence, the perverse spiral of weap-
ons. My thoughts go immediately to the
Ukrainian city of Mariupol, the city of
Mary, barbarously bombarded and
destroyed.
“I suffer and cry thinking of the
suffering of the Ukrainian population,
in particular the weakest, the elderly,
the children.”
The difference between bungling and
evil, Trevor Philips, page 24US shocked at
level of cruelty
and violence
Hugh Tomlinson WashingtonThe US has accused Russian forces of
acting with “depravity” in Ukraine, as
Washington redoubled its support for
Kyiv against the invasion.
John Kirby, the Pentagon spokes-
man, became emotional during a press
briefing, denouncing the atrocities
committed by Russian troops.
Kirby admitted the US had underes-
timated the depths to which President
Putin would sink and asked how any-
one “moral” could justify the targeting
of civilians, as allegations of Russian
war crimes continued to emerge. He
said: “I don’t think we fully appreciated
the degree to which [Putin] would visit
that kind of violence and cruelty.”
Russian forces have levelled Mariu-
pol and indiscriminately attacked civil-
ian areas of other Ukrainian cities.
Kirby’s comments provoked a rebuke
from Anatoly Antonov, the Russian
ambassador to the US, who accused
Kirby of “resorting to street insults”.
Antonov said: “It has become a norm
that administration officials base their
judgments on dirty lies of the Ukraini-
an authorities.”
President Biden has asked Congress
for $33 billion in military and humani-
tarian aid for Ukraine as the Russian in-
vasion enters a new phase, targeting
territories in the east and south.
Aid has been delayed by bipartisan
infighting in the US, but Nancy Pelosi,
the Democratic Speaker of the House,
who led a congressional delegation on a
secret visit to meet President Zelensky
in Kyiv yesterday, has vowed to pass the
spending package “as soon as possible”.
Kirby dismissed Putin’s claims that
the invasion was necessary to liberate
Ukraine from Nazis. “It’s hard to square
that rhetoric by what he’s doing in
Ukraine to innocent people,” he said.Jolie taken to
safety during
Lviv visit
Lianne KolirinAngelina Jolie was rushed off to safety
when an air raid siren went off during a
surprise visit to Lviv.
The Hollywood star, 46, was in the
city as a special envoy for the United
Nations refugee agency (UNHCR), a
role she has held since 2011, when the
alarm sounded on Saturday.
Earlier Jolie had met volunteers
working with displaced people in the
city’s railways station — many of them
children aged two to ten, according to
volunteers.
During the visit Jolie said: “They
must be in shock... I know how trauma
affects children, I know just having
somebody show how much they
matter, how much their voices matter, I
know how healing that is for them.”
Images have also emerged on social
media of Jolie visiting a school, a hospi-
tal and a café.
Maksym Kozytskyy, Lviv’s regional
governor, shared details of Jolie’s visit
on Telegram. He said that she had spo-
ken with refugees including children
undergoing treatment for injuries suf-
fered in the missile strike on the Kra-
matorsk railway station last month.a video message to their daughter Uliana Shumeiko a month after they became separated as they tried to flee the city
Angelina Jolie met displaced children
during an unannounced visit to Lviv