New negotiations between kyiv and Moscow began Tuesday in Istanbul, while Ukraine claims to gradually regain ground, especially near the capital, more than a month after the start of the Russian invasion.
Arriving in Istanbul on Monday for the first round of face-to-face talks since March 10, Russian and Ukrainian negotiators began talks shortly after 4:30 a.m. EDT, according to Turkey’s official Anadolu news agency. The discussions are held in the Dolmabahçe Palace in Istanbul, the last residence of the sultans on the Bosphorus, where the Turkish presidency has offices.
“Both sides have legitimate concerns,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said as he welcomed the delegations, calling on them to “put an end to this tragedy.”
The last face-to-face negotiating session at the level of foreign ministers in Antalya, Turkey, did not lead to any progress. Discussions have since continued via videoconference.
One of the important points of the discussions concerns “security guarantees and neutrality, the nuclear-free status of our state”, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told Russian media on Sunday, accusing his counterpart Vladimir Putin and his entourage of “dragging things “.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov tempered expectations on Monday, stressing the lack of “significant progress” in the negotiations so far.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kouleba said Monday evening on his ministry’s website that Mr. Zelensky had “given very clear instructions” to the delegation. “People, territory and sovereignty are not negotiable”.
According to him, the minimum objective of the talks in Turkey is to solve the humanitarian problems and the ultimate goal is to achieve a stable ceasefire.
The conflict has already forced nearly 3.9 million Ukrainians to flee their country, according to the UN, which will seek for its part to obtain a “humanitarian ceasefire”.
Land takeover
Ukrainian authorities announced on Monday evening that Irpin, the scene of fierce fighting in the western suburbs of kyiv, had been “liberated” from Russian forces.
“The occupiers are pushed back from Irpin, pushed back from kyiv. However, it is too early to talk about security in this part of our region. The fighting continues. Russian troops control the northern Kyiv region, have resources and manpower,” Zelensky said in a video late Monday.
On Tuesday, the situation seemed relatively calm in this locality 20 km northwest of kyiv, where sporadic gunfire could however be heard, according to AFP journalists.
However, soldiers were blocking journalists’ access to the destroyed bridge leading into the city, explaining that Ukrainian forces were still carrying out a “cleansing” operation in the area.
“In my opinion, about 70 to 80% of the city is liberated, the outer limits are still in the hands” of the Russians, Roman Kovalevskiï, 48, a resident of the city told AFP. empty petrol cans to get supplies in kyiv.
A US defense official claimed that positions of Russian forces were “static” around kyiv.
But in the regions of Chernigiv, Sumy, Kharkiv, Donbass, and in southern Ukraine, “the situation remains tense everywhere, very difficult,” said President Zelensky on Monday evening.
Around Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second city, close to the Russian border, Russian mercenaries from the Wagner group have been deployed, the British Ministry of Defense said on Monday, estimating that more than a thousand of these men could be brought to fight in the country.
Counteroffensive
4 km east of Kharkiv, Ukrainian soldiers have regained control of the small village of Mala Rogan, AFP noted, which saw two bodies of Russian soldiers lying in an alley and several Russian armored vehicles destroyed.
In the south, a Russian strike hit early Tuesday morning the building of the regional administration of Mykolaiv, a city near Odessa which has experienced a respite from the bombardments in recent days, said Vitaly Kim, the governor of this region. from southern Ukraine on Facebook.
“I was having breakfast at home,” Donald, a 69-year-old retired Canadian living in the city, told AFP, recounting hearing a loud noise.
Not far from there, in the north of the Crimean peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014, the military official of the city of Kryvyi Rih affirmed on Tuesday night that the Russian forces had “been pushed back 40-60 km from the city “.
Three humanitarian corridors are set up in this region on Tuesday to evacuate civilians, in particular from the besieged city of Mariupol, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said on Telegram. On Monday, kyiv had decided not to open a corridor, claiming to fear Russian “provocations”.
Blockade of Mariupol
Mr. Zelensky denounced on Sunday a total blockade of Mariupol, a strategic port city on the Sea of Azov which the Russian army has been trying to seize since the end of February, where around 160,000 people are still believed to be stuck.
According to Tetyana Lomakina, adviser to the Ukrainian presidency, “about 5,000 people” were buried there, “but people have not been buried for ten days because of the continuous bombardments”. She estimated that there could actually be “around 10,000 dead”.
French President Emmanuel Macron said he would discuss with Mr. Putin on Tuesday “to secure the humanitarian operation in Mariupol”, specifying that the objective was to launch it “in the very next few days”.
“Today there is a failure on the part of Russia to respect international humanitarian law,” he lamented.
A feeling shared by the NGO Amnesty International: “We are in intentional attacks on civilian infrastructure, homes”, bombings of schools, the secretary general of the NGO Agnès Callamard told AFP on Tuesday. accusing Russia of allowing humanitarian corridors to turn them into a “death trap”.
The Russian invasion in Ukraine is a “repetition” of Syria with a “multiplication of war crimes”, alerted the NGO during the presentation Tuesday in Johannesburg of its 2021-2022 report.
Meanwhile, the Kremlin continues to try to control the narrative of events.
According to Mr. Lavrov, a decree is being prepared to limit access to Russian territory for nationals of countries that have committed “unfriendly” acts against Russia, which has been targeted by a multitude of sanctions since the start of its offensive.
After its offensive, the Russian government passed several laws providing for heavy penalties, which could go up to fifteen years in prison, for the dissemination of what the authorities consider to be “false information” about the army.
The mere use of the word ‘war’ by media or individuals to describe the intervention in Ukraine is liable to prosecution, with the Kremlin and its media using the term ‘special military operation’.