Russia hits off areas near Kyiv despite scale back pledge

March 31, 2022

Russia hits off areas near Kyiv despite scale back pledge

Russian forces cordoned off areas around Kyiv and another Ukrainian city overnight, local officials said on Wednesday, just hours after Moscow promised to reduce military operations in those places. The shelling further dampened optimism about possible progress in talks aimed at ending punitive warfare.

Russia did not say exactly what the reduction in activity would look like, and while the promise initially raised hopes that a path toward ending the bloody war was at hand, Ukraine’s president and others cautioned that Commitments can only be tarnished.

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Meanwhile, Moscow reacted coldly on Wednesday to Kyiv’s proposed framework for a peace deal, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov saying it was a “positive factor” that Ukraine submitted its written proposals, but adding that they saw no success.

The British Defense Ministry said heavy losses had forced some Russian units to return to Belarus and Russia to regroup, but that Moscow would compensate for any shortfalls in ground maneuvers by using massive artillery and missile barrages. .

And the Russian military reported a new series of missile attacks on Ukrainian arsenals and fuel depots in the past 24 hours.

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Just as the war had been launched by Moscow five weeks earlier, so did the fallout beyond Ukraine’s borders. The United Nations said the number of refugees fleeing the country has now exceeded 4 million, while European industrial powerhouse Germany has issued a warning over its natural gas supply that Russia could cut deliveries unless it Payment is not made in rubles.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday reacted with skepticism to Russia’s announcement at talks in Istanbul that it would reduce military activity near the capital and the northern city of Chernihiv.

“We can call the signs positive that we hear in conversations,” he said in his nightly video address to the Ukrainian people.
“But those signals do not quell the detonations of Russian shells”.

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That skepticism was well visible by Wednesday morning. “The so-called reduction in activity in the Chernihiv region was demonstrated by enemy attacks, including air strikes on Nizhin, and they were shelling Chernihiv all night,” said regional governor Vyacheslav Chaus.

“Civil infrastructure, libraries, shopping centers, many houses were destroyed in Chernihiv.” The head of the Kyiv region’s military administration, Alexander Pavliuk, said on Wednesday that Russian shells targeted residential areas and civilian infrastructure in the surrounding Buka, Brovari and Vyshorod regions. Capital.

Russia hits off areas near Kyiv despite scale back pledge

They were not the only attacks carried out by Moscow.
Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov said on Wednesday that the military targeted fuel depots in two cities in central Ukraine with long-range cruise missiles from the air.

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He said Russian forces also targeted a Ukrainian special forces headquarters in the southern Mykolaiv region and two ammunition depots in the eastern Donetsk region.
Donetsk is in the Donbass eastern industrial region, where the Russian military says it has shifted its focus.

Top Russian military officials have said twice in recent days that their main goal is now the “liberation” of the Donbass, where Moscow-backed rebels have been battling Ukrainian forces since 2014.

Some analysts have suggested that the Kremlin’s pledge to downplay its goals and reduce activity around Kyiv and Chernihiv may only reflect reality on the ground: its ground forces are trapped and its bid to seize the capital is on the rise. There has been heavy damage in and other cities.

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Still, outlines of a possible deal to end the war were revealed at the latest round of talks in Istanbul on Tuesday.
The Ukrainian delegation offered a detailed framework for a peace deal that would guarantee the security of neutral Ukraine by a group of third countries, including the US, Britain, France, Turkey, China and Poland.

Among other things, the Kremlin has demanded that Ukraine give up any hope of joining NATO.
Vladimir Medinsky, the head of the Russian delegation, said negotiators would take him to Russian President Vladimir Putin and that Moscow would respond, but did not say when.

Russian Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Fomin said Moscow would meanwhile “fundamentally … cut military activity in the direction of Kyiv and Chernihiv” in order to “increase mutual trust and create conditions for further dialogue”. .

Talks were expected to resume on Wednesday, but in what Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu called “meaningful” progress, both sides decided to return home for consultations.