Kyiv will pull out of talks with Moscow if Ukrainian soldiers holed up at a vast steel works in Mariupol are killed by Russian troops, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Saturday.

"If our men are killed in Mariupol and if these pseudo-referendums are organised in the (southern) region of Kherson, then Ukraine will withdraw from any negotiation process," Zelensky told a news conference in Kyiv.

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