Ukraine talks begin as Russia isolated
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Talks between Russian and Ukrainian officials have begun on the Belarusian border, as Russia’s diplomatic and economic isolation deepens four days after invading Ukraine, in the biggest assault on a European state since World War Two.
Russian forces seized two small cities in southeastern Ukraine and the area around a nuclear power plant, the Interfax news agency said on Monday, but ran into stiff resistance elsewhere.
Talks began with the aim of an immediate ceasefire and the withdrawal of Russian forces, the Ukrainian president’s office said, after a Russian advance that has gone more slowly than some expected.
Russia has been cagier, with the Kremlin declining to comment on Moscow’s aim in negotiations.
It was not clear whether any progress could be achieved after President Vladimir Putin put Russia’s nuclear deterrent on high alert on Sunday.
The talks are being held on the border with strong Russian ally Belarus, where a referendum on Sunday approved a new constitution ditching the country’s non-nuclear status at a time when the former Soviet republic has become a launch pad for Russian troops invading Ukraine.
The international response to the invasion was sweeping, with sanctions that effectively cut off Moscow’s major financial institutions from successive western markets, sending Russia’s rouble down 30 per cent against the dollar on Monday. Countries also stepped up weapons supplies to Ukraine.
Blasts were heard before dawn on Monday in the capital of Kyiv and in the major eastern city of Kharkiv, Ukrainian authorities said. But Russian ground forces’ attempts to capture major urban centres had been repelled, they added.
Russia’s defence ministry, however, said its forces had taken over the towns of Berdyansk and Enerhodar in Ukraine’s southeastern Zaporizhzhya region as well as the area around the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant, Interfax reported.
Ukraine denied that the nuclear plant had fallen into Russian hands, according to the news agency.
At least 102 civilians in Ukraine have been killed since Thursday, with a further 304 wounded, but the real figure is feared to be “considerably higher”, UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet said on Monday.
More than half a million people have fled to neighbouring countries, according to the UN Refugee Agency.
A senior US defence official said Russia had fired more than 350 missiles at Ukrainian targets since Thursday, some hitting civilian infrastructure.
Partners in the US-led NATO defence alliance were providing Ukraine with air-defence missiles and anti-tank weapons, Chief Jens Stoltenberg said in a tweet on Monday.
The Kremlin accused the European Union of hostile behaviour, saying weapons supplies to Ukraine were destabilising and proved that Russia was right in its efforts to demilitarise its neighbour.
Germany said it would increase defence spending massively, casting off decades of reluctance to match its economic power with military clout.
Russia’s central bank scrambled to manage the broadening fallout, saying it would resume buying gold on the domestic market, launch a repurchase auction with no limits and ease restrictions on banks’ open foreign currency positions.
It also ordered brokers to block attempt by foreigners to sell Russian securities.
Several European subsidiaries of Sberbank Russia, majority owned by the Russian government, were failing or were likely to fail due to the reputational cost of the war in Ukraine, the European Central Bank said.
Corporate giants also took action, with British oil major BP, the biggest foreign investor in Russia, saying it would abandon its stake in state oil company Rosneft at a cost of up to $25 billion.
The UN Human Rights Council agreed on Monday to Ukraine’s request to hold an urgent debate this week on Russia’s invasion, minutes after Kyiv’s envoy told the Geneva forum that some of Moscow’s military actions “may amount to war crimes”.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Monday asked the European Union to allow Ukraine to gain membership immediately.
“Our goal is to be with all Europeans and, most importantly, to be equal… I am sure we deserve it,” he said in a video speech shared on social media.
Reuters
