Seventeen dead announced in a Ukrainian bombardment in Donetsk, two dead in Russian strikes in Kiev: on the 19th day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the fighting continued to spread on Monday and the toll grew , although a new round of Russian-Ukrainian talks raised a glimmer of hope.
In recent days, fighting has intensified around the capital, almost completely surrounded, which has been emptied of more than half of its three million inhabitants.
The Kremlin has also announced that its army “does not rule out the possibility of taking under total control (the) large cities which are already surrounded”. This would involve a massive military assault, while resistance is fierce.
From dawn on Monday, an eight-storey building in a northern district of Kiev, Obolon, was hit, probably “by artillery fire”, killing one and injuring twelve, according to the Ukrainian emergency services. Later, another bombardment hit another neighborhood, near the Antonov aircraft factory, killing another.
On the northwestern outskirts of Kiev, where fighting has been raging for several days, a first foreign journalist, the American Brent Renaud, died on Sunday, hit in the neck by a bullet of uncertain origin.
The capital is “a city under siege”, said an adviser to the Ukrainian president on Sunday evening.
In Donetsk, pro-Russian separatists, backed by Moscow and its army, who have held this industrial center since 2014, announced that a strike by the Ukrainian army had killed at least 17 people in the city center. They posted photos showing bloodied bodies lying on a street amid debris.
According to this source, the separatist air defense intercepted a Ukrainian missile and the victims were killed by the shrapnel.
‘No more safe place’
Further west, in another major industrial city, Dnipro, hitherto seen as a refuge for civilians arriving from Kharkiv or Zaporozhye, warning sirens sounded Monday morning for five hours, for the first time since the beginning of the Russian invasion on February 24.
If the city did not finally suffer a strike, “there is no longer any safe place”, testified to AFP Yilena, 38, who arrived from Zaporozhye in early March.
In the south of the country, Russia has tightened its grip, according to the British Ministry of Defense which tweeted that Russian naval forces had “established a remote blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea coast”.
The port city of Mykolaiv was again targeted by shelling on Sunday, killing nine people, authorities said.
The situation is still dramatic in the strategic port of Mariupol, in the south-east of Ukraine on the Sea of Azov. Besieged, lacking everything, he is still waiting for humanitarian aid. According to the municipality, 2,187 residents have been killed since February 24.
The fighting is also spreading to the west of the country, so far relatively calm, with strikes overnight from Saturday to Sunday on the Yavoriv military base, near Poland, a member country of NATO and the European Union. , and close to Lviv, a city of refuge for thousands of displaced people.
According to Moscow, dozens of “foreign mercenaries” were killed there, while local authorities say only Ukrainians died.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has again urged NATO to establish a no-fly zone over his country, which the Alliance refuses for fear of being drawn into war.
Putin-Zelensky?
It is in this context that talks between the Russian and Ukrainian delegations resumed, around 6:15 a.m. Montreal time by videoconference.
Shortly before their resumption, the head of the Ukrainian negotiators Mykhaïlo Podoliak indicated that his demands remained “an immediate ceasefire, the withdrawal of all Russian troops”.
“Only after that we can talk about our neighborly relations and our political differences,” he said in a video on Twitter.
After three rounds of face-to-face discussions in Belarus, plus a meeting on Thursday under the aegis of Turkey between the heads of Russian and Ukrainian diplomacy, the two parties had been more optimistic in recent days.
Sunday evening, a Russian negotiator spoke of “significant progress”. Leonid Sloutski, quoted by Russian press agencies, even mentioned “documents to be signed” in preparation.
Shortly after, Mykhaïlo Podoliak tweeted that Moscow had stopped issuing “ultimatums” to Kiev and started to “listen carefully”.
He echoed similar remarks by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday, after Vladimir Putin spoke of “positive progress”.
For the Ukrainian head of state, his delegation has “a clear task: to do everything to ensure a meeting of presidents”.
Beijing suspected of helping Moscow
While waiting for a breakthrough in the talks, the risk of a widening of the conflict remains on everyone’s mind.
Senior US and Chinese officials are due to meet in Rome on Monday, according to the White House, which is concerned about possible assistance from Beijing to Moscow.
NATO exercises, “Cold Response 2022”, planned for a long time, started Monday in Norway, supposed to test the ability of its members to come to the aid of one of them. Some 30,000 soldiers, 200 planes and around 50 ships from 27 nations will be mobilized in the Arctic.
The Western camp also again testified by telephone its support for Kiev on Sunday. The head of American diplomacy Antony Blinken assured his Ukrainian counterpart, Dmytro Kouleba, of “the unshakable solidarity of the United States with Ukraine to defend it”, according to his spokesman Ned Price.
French President Emmanuel Macron, who speaks regularly with Vladimir Putin to try to bring him to a ceasefire, spoke to him with Mr. Zelensky and with Joe Biden, with whom he agreed to “strengthen the sanctions inflicted on Russia, according to the French presidency.
“Artificial” payment default
Faced with these sanctions, which notably freeze some 300 billion dollars of Russian reserves abroad, Moscow has accused the West of wanting to provoke an “artificial” default by Russia.
“Statements that Russia cannot fulfill its obligations regarding its public debt do not correspond to reality,” the Russian Finance Ministry said on Monday.
The sanctions notably challenge Russia to honor several debt payment deadlines in foreign currencies during March-April. Reviving the memory of his humiliating defect of 1998.
Another practical effect of the Russian-Western standoff, the Instagram social network, owned by the American group Meta, became inaccessible in Russia on Monday.
Moscow, which accuses Meta of spreading calls for violence against Russians in connection with the conflict in Ukraine, has added the network to its list of “restricted access” sites, such as Facebook, Twitter and several media critical of Russian power.