Pressure continues to mount on Monday on Moscow, which is to welcome a European leader, Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer, for the first time since the invasion of Ukraine, pending new European sanctions and while the French bank Société General has announced that it is ending its activities in Russia.
On the ground, Ukrainian troops are fortifying their positions in the east, fearing a massive and deadly offensive by the Russians, who have made this region their priority objective after withdrawing their troops from the kyiv region and the north. .
After traveling to Ukraine on Saturday, Karl Nehammer is due to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow in the afternoon, with “the intention of doing everything possible to ensure that measures are taken in favor of peace”, while recognizing that the chances of doing so were slim.
“We are militarily neutral, but we have a clear position on the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine. She must stop! We need humanitarian corridors, a ceasefire and a full war crimes investigation,” he tweeted on Sunday.
Mr. Nehammer added that he intended to raise in the Kremlin the “war crimes” in Boutcha, northwest of kyiv, which has become a symbol of the atrocities of the war in Ukraine. Nearly 300 people were buried there in mass graves, according to the Ukrainian authorities, who accuse the Russians of massacres, which Moscow denies as a whole, denouncing a “manipulation”.
In Luxembourg, the foreign ministers of the European Union (EU) study Monday morning a sixth package of sanctions against Moscow, which will however not affect the purchases of oil and gas. The head of EU diplomacy Josep Borrell announced his intention to launch the discussion on an oil embargo on Monday, “but a formal proposal is not on the table”, admitted a senior European official on Friday.
Monday morning, the French bank Societe Generale, very involved so far in Russia, was added to the list of Western companies which announced they would cease their activities in the country since the invasion of Ukraine by Russian troops on 24 february.
The French bank announced that it was going to do so by selling in particular its entire stake in Rosbank, a heavyweight in the Russian banking sector in which it was the majority shareholder. It was exposed in Russia to the tune of 18.6 billion euros, including 15.4 billion for Rosbank.
Mines and anti-tank obstacles
On the ground, Ukrainian forces continued this weekend to fortify their positions in the east of the country, in fear of an upcoming major Russian offensive.
In the rural area of Barvinkove, for example, Ukrainian soldiers and members of the Territorial Defense mined roadsides and set up anti-tank obstacles at all intersections.
After having revised its plans downwards and withdrawn its troops from the kyiv region and northern Ukraine, Moscow has made its priority the total conquest of Donbass, in the East, part of which has been controlled since 2014 by pro-Russian separatists.
“Next week will be no less important than this or the previous ones. Russian troops will move to even larger operations in the east of our state,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned in a statement on Sunday evening.
“The battle for Donbass will last for several days, and during these days our cities could be completely destroyed”, predicted for his part on Facebook Serguiï Gaïdaï, the governor of the Lugansk region, in Donbass, calling again on civilians to leave the region within the five planned humanitarian corridors.
“The Mariupol scenario can be repeated in the Lugansk region,” he said, referring to the major port in southeastern Ukraine devastated and besieged since late February by Russian forces.
For its part, the Russian Defense Ministry on Sunday accused Ukrainians and Westerners of “monstrous and ruthless” provocations and killings of civilians in Lugansk.
Analysts say Vladimir Putin, whose decision to invade Ukraine has met with fierce Ukrainian resistance, wants to secure a victory in Donbass ahead of the May 9 military parade in Red Square marking the Soviet victory over the Nazis.
While the population tries to flee the eastern regions of Ukraine to escape the battle which is announced there, the airstrikes and the bombardments continue: Sunday, they made at least 11 dead, including a 7-year-old child, and 14 injured in Kharkiv (east), the country’s second largest city, and its suburbs, according to regional governor Oleg Sinegoubov.
“The Russian army continues to wage war on civilians, for lack of victories on the front,” he accused.
According to the office of the Prosecutor General, Iryna Venediktova, 183 children have died and more than 342 have been injured in the country since the start of the Russian invasion.
In the vicinity of kyiv, occupied for several weeks by the Russian army, the search for bodies continues.
“To date, we have 1,222 people killed, for the Kyiv region alone,” Venediktova told Britain’s Sky News channel.
She did not specify whether the bodies discovered were exclusively those of civilians, but she also mentioned 5,600 investigations opened for alleged war crimes since the start of the Russian invasion on February 24, including those of Boutcha.
In Bouzova, also near kyiv, two bodies dressed in civilian clothes were discovered in a grave, AFP journalists noted. A woman looked inside before collapsing, having recognized the body by the shoes: “My son, my son,” she cried.
Open to negotiation
“Boutcha was not made in a day. For many years, Russian political elites and propaganda have incited hatred, dehumanized Ukrainians, nurtured Russian superiority and prepared the ground for these atrocities,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba wrote on Twitter on Sunday.
But in an interview with the American channel NBC on Sunday evening, Mr. Kouleba nevertheless declared himself open to negotiation with Moscow.
“If sitting down with the Russians can help me prevent at least one massacre like in Bucha, or at least one more attack like in Kramatorsk, I must seize this opportunity,” he said.
A missile strike in front of the Kramatorsk train station in eastern Ukraine killed 57 people, including at least 5 children on Friday.
President Zelensky called on Westerners to “follow the example of the United Kingdom” – whose Prime Minister Boris Johnson made a surprise visit to Ukraine on Saturday – by imposing “a total embargo on Russian hydrocarbons”.
For his part, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the Alliance was preparing plans for a permanent military force on its borders to prevent further Russian aggression.
This new force will, he added, be a “long-term consequence” of the invasion of Ukraine.