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Kremlin calls for more substantial, active talks
“There is some kind of process happening. We would like more active and substantial (talks),” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists.
The Kremlin said on Tuesday it would like the ongoing negotiations with Kyiv aimed at ending Russia’s military action in Ukraine to have more substance.
“There is some kind of process happening. We would like more active and substantial (talks),” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists.
Russia’s position was “well-known to the Ukrainian side” because Moscow handed over its demands in written form “many days ago”, Peskov said. “We would like a more substantial and swift answer.”
The two sides are currently holding negotiations remotely after several rounds of talks between delegations meeting on the border between Belarus and Ukraine. So far, the talks have yielded little progress, with both sides blaming the other, and none have been at the presidential level.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky renewed an offer of direct peace talks with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin late Monday.
Zelensky told local media that he was ready to meet Putin “in any format” to discuss ending the war that has shattered several Ukrainian cities. He said even the status of Russian-occupied Crimea and Russian-backed statelets in Donbas was up for debate.
Russia has declared Crimea part of Russia and recognised the independence of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic in eastern Ukraine.
All three areas were part of Ukraine following the collapse of the Soviet Union and are at the centre of a decade-old crisis that escalated on February 24.
Ukraine’s foreign ministry said on Tuesday about 300,000 people in the occupied city of Kherson were running out of food and medical supplies, and accused Russia of preventing civilians evacuating to Ukraine-controlled territory.
The number of Ukrainians fleeing abroad is now 3,556,924, the United Nations’ Refugee Agency said on Tuesday, with more than 2 million crossing the border into Poland.
“There is nothing left there. Only ruins,” Zelenskiy said of Mariupol, which has a peacetime population of 400,000, in a video address to the Italian parliament.
As he was speaking, the city council said Russian forces had dropped two large bombs on Mariupol but gave no details of casualties or damage. Reuters could not independently verify the report. Russia did not immediately comment on it.
Progress being made on key issues: UN
The United Nations chief says his discussions with officials indicate “there is enough on the table to cease hostilities now” and seriously negotiate peace between Russia and Ukraine.
Secretary-heneral Antonio Guterres told reporters on Tuesday that the war is “unwinnable,” and the only question is how many more lives will be lost and how many more cities like Mariupol will be destroyed before the war moves from the battlefield to the peace table.
“From my outreach with various actors, elements of diplomatic progress are coming into view on several key issues,” he said, enough to end hostilities now. Guterres did not state what those elements are or answer any questions.
“Even if Mariupol falls, Ukraine cannot be conquered city by city, street by street, house by house,” the secretary-general said. Guterres said “the Ukrainian people are enduring a living hell,” and the war’s reverberations “are being felt worldwide with skyrocketing food, energy and fertiliser prices threatening to spiral into a global hunger crisis.”
Japan reacted angrily on Tuesday after Russia withdrew from peace treaty talks with Japan and froze joint economic projects related to the disputed Kuril islands because of Japanese sanctions over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Russia and Japan have not formally ended World War Two hostilities because of their standoff over islands, seized by the Soviet Union at the end of World War Two, just off Japan’s northernmost island of Hokkaido.
