Three EU Leaders To Visit Kyiv To Show Support For Ukraine

News about EU leaders’ trip
Shells hit Kyiv
The leaders of the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovenia went to Kyiv
Zelensky’s adviser: the war will end by May

LVIV, Ukraine, March 15 – Three European prime ministers arrived in Kyiv on Tuesday. They are the first foreign leaders to visit the Ukrainian capital since Russia launched its invasion, a stark symbol of Ukraine’s success in fending off a Russian attack.

Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala and Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki announced plans for the visit, saying they and Slovenian leader Janez Jansa would meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Zelensky’s office confirmed the plans.

“The purpose of the visit is to reaffirm the unconditional support of the entire European Union for Ukraine’s sovereignty and independence,” Fiala said, adding that the three leaders would present a broad support package to Ukraine.

Morawiecki’s aide Michal Dwoczyk told reporters that the delegation had crossed the Polish-Ukrainian border and was heading by train to Kyiv, which the Polish leader said was a historic mission.

“Our duty is to be where history is forged. Because this is not about us, but about the future of our children, who deserve to live in a world free from tyranny,” Morawiecki said.

The three leaders will arrive in a city still under bombardment, where about half of the 3.4 million people have fled and many are sleeping in subway stations. Two powerful explosions rocked the capital before dawn on Tuesday, and emergency services said two people had died in the impact on an apartment building. More

Nearly three weeks after the outbreak of a war that Westerners say Moscow could have won within days, the largest invasion force in Europe since World War II has halted at the gates of Kyiv, with major road and rail routes out of the capital still open. . Huge armored columns of Russian troops failed to capture any of the 10 largest cities in Ukraine, despite bombardments that left some residential areas in ruins.

Hosting foreign dignitaries in his capital would be a remarkable symbolic success for Zelenskiy, who turned down offers of evacuation early in the war, staying under fire to rally his nation with nightly messages from the city.

In his most confident public statement, Zelenskiy called on Russian troops to surrender, saying they and their officers already knew the war was hopeless.

“Russian conscripts! Listen to me very carefully. Russian officers! You already understood everything: You will not take anything from Ukraine. You will take lives. There are many of you. But your life will be taken away. But why should you die? Why? I know that you want to survive,” he said.

AT THE CROSSROADS

One of Zelensky’s top aides said the war would be over by May – and could even be over within a few weeks – as Russia had effectively run out of fresh troops to continue fighting.

“Now we are at a crossroads: either very quickly, within a week or two, a peace treaty will be concluded with the withdrawal of troops and everything else, or there will be an attempt to scrape together some, say, Syrians for the second round, and when we also finalize them, then agreement by the middle or end of April,” Alexei Arestovich said in a video message.

“I think that no later than May, at the beginning of May, we should have a peace agreement, maybe much earlier: we’ll see,” Arestovich said.

These remarks projected a newfound confidence that Ukraine’s vastly outnumbered forces made it impossible for Russia to achieve what Western countries thought was Moscow’s goal – to install pro-Russian leaders in Kyiv.

Russia says it is not targeting civilians and is conducting a “special operation” to disarm and “denazify” Ukraine, which Kyiv and its allies are calling a baseless pretext to invade a democratic country of 44 million people.

In the city of Rivne in western Ukraine, hundreds of kilometers from the war zone, Ukrainian officials said 19 people were killed in a Russian airstrike on a television tower. If confirmed, it would be the worst attack on a civilian target in the northwestern part of the country to date.

The Ukrainian and Russian delegations were to resume peace talks later Tuesday via video link.

So far, no progress has been announced in these talks, which have focused on allowing the evacuation of civilians and the delivery of aid to the besieged cities, especially the eastern port of Mariupol. Hundreds are believed to have been killed there since Russia laid siege to the city of 400,000 in the first week of the war. Russian troops allowed the first convoy of vehicles to leave the city on Monday, but attempts to impose a local ceasefire to bring in humanitarian aid convoys have failed for 10 consecutive days. Ukrainian officials said they would try again on Tuesday.

While armored columns approaching Kiev appear to have been halted on the outskirts of the city, Russian forces have had more success in the south, capturing several small towns off the coast of the Black and Azov Seas.

In an intelligence brief on Tuesday, the UK Department of Defense reported demonstrations against Russian occupation in the cities of Kherson, Berdyansk and Melitopol, with Russian troops firing warning shots to disperse crowds in Kherson. It is reported that the Russian military kidnapped the mayors of Melitopol and Dneprorudny.

‘NO WAR’

The war brought economic isolation to Russia, never before experienced by such a large economy. In Russia itself, this was accompanied by a near-complete crackdown on free speech, with the shutdown of all major independent media and shutdown of Western social media apps. Reporting with references to “war” or “invasion” is prohibited.

During a rare anti-war protest during the main news program on the main state television channel, an employee stood behind the anchor and held up a banner in English and Russian that read: “NO TO WAR. Stop the war. Don’t believe the propaganda.” … Here you are being lied to.” She was quickly arrested. More

More than 2.8 million people have left Ukraine since the start of the war, according to the United Nations.

“I am running away with my child because I want my child to live,” said a Ukrainian woman named Tanya, who said she had traveled from the city of Nikolaev in southern Ukraine across the Danube River to Romania. “Because the people who are there now are Russians, Russian soldiers, and they are killing children.”

Reuters reporting; Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Tomasz Janowski

Our Standards: Trust Principles.