A Russian airstrike has hit a residential building in Kyiv as Moscow’s forces stepped up their brutal campaign to capture Ukraine’s capital and other major cities, even as a fourth round of peace talks between the two sides got under way.
A day after Russia attacked a military base near the Polish border, an airstrike in Kyiv’s Obolon district killed one person and wounded several others, emergency services said on Monday, revising an earlier death toll down by one.
One person was found dead in the nine-storey apartment building, officials said, with three more people hospitalised as air raid sirens sounded in the capital and other cities hours before Ukrainian and Russian negotiators were sent set to resume talks.
Kyiv city authorities also said on Monday that the Antonov aircraft plant, also known as Hostomel, about 11km north-west of the centre, had been shelled. The site is the country’s most important international cargo airport, as well as a key military airbase. They said the city was stockpiling two weeks’ worth of food for the 2 million people who have not yet fled.
The fourth round of formal talks – held via videoconference – would focus on achieving a ceasefire, securing Russian troop withdrawals and establishing security guarantees for Ukraine, a Ukrainian negotiator, Mykhailo Podolyak, said on Monday, after both sides gave positive assessments for progress.
“The parties actively express their specified positions,” Podolyak tweeted. “Communication is being held yet it’s hard. The reason for the discord is two different political systems.”
Podolyak had said earlier that Russia was “beginning to talk constructively” and he thought “we will achieve some results literally in a matter of days”. A Russian delegate, Leonid Slutsky, also said daily contact between the two teams had allowed significant progress and draft agreements could be possible soon.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, said one aim of the “difficult negotiating work” was to set up a meeting between himself and Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, with the ultimate goal of “Ukraine getting the necessary result for peace and for security”.
The country’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, called on the west on Monday to supply Ukraine with weapons and apply further sanctions on Russia to help prevent other countries being dragged into a wider conflict.
“To those abroad scared of being dragged into WWIII: Ukraine fights back successfully. We need you to help us fight. Provide us with all necessary weapons,” Kuleba tweeted. “Apply more sanctions on Russia and isolate it fully. Help Ukraine force Putin into failure and you will avert a larger war.”
As Russian airstrikes and artillery fire continued to hit residential ares, Ukraine’s general prosecutor’s office said 90 children had been killed since the start of the conflict. The UN has recorded at least 596 civilian deaths since Russia invaded Ukraine, but believes the true toll is much higher.
Frontline towns around Kyiv were being successfully evacuated for the fifth consecutive day, however, the regional governor, Oleksiy Kuleba, said, adding that a ceasefire to allow civilians to leave was “holding, albeit it is very conditional”.
The country’s deputy prime minister, Iryna Vereshchuk, said local authorities would try to evacuate civilians on Monday from towns near the capital as well as besieged cities in the south and east along 10 “humanitarian corridors”.
Further attempts would also be made to unblock a humanitarian convoy trying to get food and medicine into the stricken city of Mariupol, Vereshchuk said. A Ukrainian presidential adviser, Oleksiy Arestovych, said on Monday that more than 2,500 residents of the Black Sea port, many of whose residents have been without power, heat or water for more than a week, had died since the invasion began on 24 February.
The talks come a day after Russian airstrikes hit a Ukrainian military training ground near the Polish border, killed at least 35 people and wounding more than 130, and a US journalist was killed by Russian forces in a town outside Kyiv.
The strikes on the Yavoriv base in the far west of Ukraine followed warnings from the Kremlin that western military equipment destined for Ukrainian forces was stored at the facility and describing western supply lines into Ukraine as “legitimate targets”.
Zelensky warned on Monday that Nato member states could come under Russian attack if it did not act to impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine. “If you do not close our sky, it is only a matter of time before Russian missiles fall on your territory, on Nato territory, on the homes of Nato citizens,” he said in a video address.
Washington and its EU allies have sent funds and military aid to Ukraine and imposed unprecedented economic sanctions on Russia, but ruled out any direct intervention, with the US president, Joe Biden, saying Nato fighting Russia “is world war three”.
The west has imposed sanctions on Russian billionaire oligarchs close to Putin, frozen Russian state assets and cut off much of the country’s corporate sector from the global economy in an attempt to force Moscow to change course.
Russia warned on Monday that while it had approved a temporary procedure for repaying its foreign currency debt, payments would be made in roubles if sanctions prevented banks from honouring debts in the currency of issue.
Several US officials have said Russia has also asked China for military equipment. The US national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, who is due to meet China’s top diplomat, Yang Jiechi, in Rome on Monday, said China would “absolutely” face consequences if it helped Moscow evade western sanctions.
A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said US assertions that Russia asked Beijing for military equipment for its campaign in Ukraine were “disinformation” from the US, while Liu Pengyu, spokesperson for China’s embassy in Washington, said: “I’ve never heard of that.” China found the situation in Ukraine “disconcerting”, he added.
Source: The Guardian