Russia dropped its preconditions for talks after suffering military setbacks, Ukraine’s foreign minister said on Sunday, adding that Ukraine would attend the talks to listen to what Russia had to say.
LVIV, Ukraine – Russia dropped its preconditions for talks after suffering military setbacks, Ukraine’s foreign minister said on Sunday, adding that Ukraine would attend the talks to listen to what Russia had to say.
Dmytro Kuleba also told a briefing that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s move to put nuclear forces on high alert was timed to put pressure on Ukraine during the negotiations.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Sunday that Russia had agreed to talks at a venue on the Belarusian border, the first since Russia unleashed a full-scale invasion of its neighbour earlier this week.
“We agreed that the Ukrainian delegation would meet with the Russian delegation without preconditions on the Ukrainian-Belarusian border, near the Pripyat River,” he said in a statement.
The streets of central Kyiv meanwhile lay almost deserted in the winter sunshine on Sunday, with residents ordered to stay in shelters as Russian forces continued to shell the city’s outskirts, although some were still trying to leave despite the curfew.
On the fourth day of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the capital was still in Ukrainian government hands, with Zelenskiy rallying his people despite Russian attacks on civilian infrastructure.
At Kyiv’s main railway station, hundreds of stranded passengers waited for trains to take them west, away from the fighting, watched over by a heavy guard of black-clad police armed with assault rifles.
The United Nations said nearly 400,000 people have fled abroad since Putin launched the invasion.
James from Cameroon, who worked in Kyiv as a chef for the past decade, said he wanted to go to west Ukraine and stay there until the end of hostilities.
“Where do I go? To Europe and be treated as a migrant? Here is all I have, apartment, everything,” he said, declining to give his full name.
Lisa, a mother of two children aged 3 and 5, hauled heavy bags across station’s main hall. She and her mother also wanted to go to western Ukraine.
“Away from here, until this stops and then we will come back,” she said. “My husband is a reservist and all our (male) relatives joined the TO (Territorial Defense).”
Russian missiles found their mark overnight, including a strike that set an oil terminal ablaze in Vasylkiv, south-west of Kyiv, the town’s mayor said.
Blasts sent huge flames and billowing black smoke into the night sky, online posts showed. Later in the day, missiles also impacted the neighbourhood of Troyechchyna, witnesses said.
In downtown Kyiv, Svyatoslav Yurash, a parliamentary deputy of Zelenskiy’s Servant of the People party, brandished an assault rifle slung on his shoulder. He said he wanted to visit some troops nearby and then go to Kyiv’s western outskirts to join the fight.
Yurash, dressed in a white shirt decorated with traditional Ukrainian folk embroidery, said he did not expect “Russians to give up”.
“You have seen (it), we had shelling, we had fighting, we will have more of it,” he said. “He (Putin) wants to have Ukraine destroyed.”
Russian soldiers and armoured vehicles rolled into Kharkiv, located in Ukraine’s north-west and its second largest city, on Sunday and witnesses reported firing and explosions. But city authorities said Ukrainian fighters had repelled the attack.
“Control over Kharkiv is completely ours! The armed forces, the police, and the defence forces are working, and the city is being completely cleansed of the enemy,” regional Governor Oleh Sinegubov said.
– REUTERS
