Russia and Ukraine met on Monday for their first talks since the outbreak of war last week, with Kyiv demanding an “immediate ceasefire” as the number of refugees fleeing the country hit more than 500,000.
As the delegations arrived for talks on the border between Belarus and Ukraine on day five of Moscow’s invasion, the Ukrainian presidency demanded the ceasefire “and the withdrawal of troops” — which Moscow is almost certain to reject.
“I do not really believe in the outcome of this meeting, but let them try,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said.
Western defence officials and the Kyiv government say battling Ukrainian troops have kept the country’s major cities out of Russian hands despite incursions in the capital Kyiv and the second largest city, Kharkiv, over the weekend.
“The Russian occupiers have reduced the pace of the offensive,” the general staff of the Ukrainian armed forces said on Monday, again claiming that Moscow had suffered “heavy losses”. The small southern city of Berdyansk has been occupied by Russian soldiers, however, Ukrainian officials said.
In the capital on Monday, after a relatively calm evening, people rushed out to buy food after the lifting of a strict blanket curfew imposed on Saturday, with local forces given shoot-on-sight orders over the weekend.
Amid reports of further Russian troop movements towards Kyiv, Moscow said it had now “gained air superiority over the entire territory of Ukraine”, while accusing Ukrainian troops of using civilians as human shields.
Putin on Sunday ordered Russia’s nuclear forces onto high alert in response to what he called “unfriendly” steps by the West, whose unity and speed in imposing sanctions on the Russian economy has surprised observers. “The Western sanctions on Russia are hard, but our country has the necessary potential to compensate the damage,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists on Monday. The UN’s refugee agency UNHCR said over half a million people have fled Ukraine since the invasion began. Agencies
