Home ›› 31 Mar 2022 ›› Front
The Kremlin on Wednesday welcomed the fact that Kyiv has set out its demands for an end to the conflict in Ukraine in written form, but said there was no sign of a breakthrough yet.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that Russia had not noticed anything really promising or that looked like a breakthrough, and said there was a long period of work ahead.
Ukraine presented its demands when negotiators from the two sides met in Turkey on Tuesday before adjourning to consult with their capitals.
Peskov said the chief Russian negotiator in the peace talks would provide an update later on Wednesday - but that Crimea was part of Russia, and the Russian constitution precluded discussing the fate of any Russian region with anyone else.
He also said Russia wanted the substance of what was being discussed in the negotiations to remain private.
Russia said in Istanbul that it would sharply scale back military activity around Kyiv and the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv as a sign of goodwill.
Russian forces bombarded a besieged city in northern Ukraine on Wednesday, a day after promising to scale down operations there, and Kyiv and its Western allies dismissed a pullback near the capital as a ploy to regroup by invaders taking heavy losses.
Nearly five weeks into an invasion in which it has failed to capture any major cities, Russia said it would curtail operations near Kyiv and the northern city of Chernihiv “to increase mutual trust” for peace talks.
But Chernihiv’s Mayor Vladyslav Astroshenko said Russian bombardment had only intensified over the past 24 hours, with more than 100,000 people trapped in the city with just enough food and medical supplies to last about another week.
“This is yet another confirmation that Russia always lies,” he told CNN in an interview. “They actually have increased the intensity of strikes,” with “a colossal mortar attack in the centre of Chernihiv” on Wednesday wounding 25 civilians. Reuters could not immediately verify the situation there.
In an overnight address, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy made clear he took nothing Moscow said at face value.
“Ukrainians are not naive people,” he said. “Ukrainians have already learned during these 34 days of invasion, and over the past eight years of the war in Donbas, that the only thing they can trust is a concrete result.”
Zelenskiy advisor Oleksiy Arestovych said Moscow was shifting some forces from northern Ukraine to the east, where it was trying to encircle the main Ukrainian force there. Some Russians would stay behind near Kyiv to tie Ukrainian forces down, he said.
Russian forces also hit industrial facilities in western Ukraine in three strikes overnight, a regional governor said.
The past week has seen Ukrainian forces make substantial gains, recapturing towns and villages on the outskirts of Kyiv, breaking the siege of the eastern city of Sumy and pushing back Russian forces in the southwest.
The Pentagon said Russia had started moving very small numbers of troops away from positions around Kyiv, describing the move as more of a repositioning than a withdrawal.
“We all should be prepared to watch for a major offensive against other areas of Ukraine,” spokesman John Kirby told a news briefing. “It does not mean that the threat to Kyiv is over.”
Britain’s defence ministry said Moscow was being forced to pull troops from the vicinity of Kyiv to Russia and Belarus, to resupply and reorganise after taking heavy losses.
Russia was likely to compensate for its reduced ground manoeuvre capability through mass artillery and missile strikes, it added.
