Ukraine said it would start a new round of peace talks with Russia from Monday in Turkey after previous talks failed to make significant progress, with the two sides accusing each other of not cooperating.
“During the discussions, today [domingo]in a videoconference, it was decided to hold, in Turkey, a next round in person between the 28th and 30th of March”, said Ukrainian negotiator David Arakhamia this Sunday (27), on social media.
Russian leader in the talks Vladimir Medinski also spoke of a new round of talks, according to Russian news agencies, but said they would take place on Tuesday and Wednesday, without specifying where.
A face-to-face session of Russian-Ukrainian negotiations was already held on March 10 in the Turkish city of Antalya, between the foreign ministers of the two countries, without leading to concrete advances.
The Russian government says substantial progress in the talks is a condition for Presidents Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky to be able to meet to negotiate a possible end to the conflict – the Ukrainian has been asking for a meeting since the beginning of the war.
Moscow says it is showing more willingness than Ukraine in favor of talks and has urged the international community to use its influence on Kiev to make it more constructive in negotiations.
On Sunday (27), Zelensky again asked the West to supply Ukraine with tanks, planes and missiles, also saying that Moscow has been attacking the country’s fuel and food depots.
Ukrainian military intelligence chief Kirilo Budanov said his country’s army was using guerrilla tactics to push Russian troops back and that Putin was trying to split Ukraine in two to create a region controlled by Moscow after not be able to dominate the whole country.
“It is an attempt to create North and South Korea in Ukraine,” Budanov said in a statement, referring to the division of Korea after World War II.
Meanwhile, the leader of the self-proclaimed Lugansk People’s Republic in the east of the country has signaled that the region could soon hold a referendum on Russia’s membership, just as happened in Crimea after Putin seized the Ukrainian peninsula in 2014.
“I believe that in the near future a referendum will be organized on the territory of the republic. The people will exercise their supreme constitutional right and express their opinion on accession to the Russian Federation,” said Leonid Pasechnik, quoted by Russian news agencies.
In 2014, Crimea voted overwhelmingly to break with Ukraine and join Russia — an outcome that much of the world refused to recognize.
The Ukrainian government reacted to the statement, saying that such consultations would have no legal basis. “All false referendums in the temporarily occupied territories are null and void,” Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Oleg Nikolenko said in a statement to Reuters. “Instead, Russia will face an even stronger response from the international community, deepening its global isolation.”
A report by the Ukrainian Armed Forces says that Russia continues on Sunday with a “large-scale armed aggression” and that Kiev forces repelled seven attacks in the breakaway regions of Donetsk and Lugansk.
The United Nations human rights office released a new tally of civilian casualties from the conflict: at least 1,119 died and 1,790 were injured, according to the current count, which runs from February 24 to midnight on March 26.
Of that total, 99 were children —15 girls, 32 boys and 52 whose sex is still unknown.
Actual casualty figures are believed to be considerably higher, the body said, due to the delay in reporting in some regions where intense hostilities occur and the fact that many reports have yet to be verified.
Biden’s remarks about Putin spark backlash
This Sunday (27), the harsh statements made by US President Joe Biden against Russian Vladimir Putin the day before continued to have repercussions. The comments by Biden, who called Putin a “butcher” and said he could not remain in power, marked an escalation in the tone the US has used against Russia since the start of the war.
“I would not use that kind of wording because I continue to have discussions with President Putin,” French President Emmanuel Macron told France 3 TV channel.
“We want to stop the war that Russia has launched in Ukraine without escalation – that is the objective,” he added, saying he wanted to obtain a ceasefire and the withdrawal of troops through diplomatic means. “If that’s what we want to do, we shouldn’t escalate things — not with words or actions,” she said.
On a visit to Jerusalem, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken played down the most controversial point of the speech. “I think the president, the White House stated last night that, quite simply, President Putin cannot be empowered to wage war or engage in aggression against Ukraine or any other country,” he said.
“As you know, and as you have heard us say repeatedly, we do not have a regime change strategy in Russia or anywhere else. In this case, as in any other, it is up to the people of the country in question. It depends on the Russian people.” , he added.
The White House had already released a press release saying that Biden “did not call for regime change in Russia”, only “argued that Putin cannot exercise power over his neighbors or the region”.
When asked about the speech by Reuters, Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov said that “it is not up to Biden to decide that.” “The president of Russia is elected by the Russians,” he said.
