Diplomatic efforts have intensified to end the war in Ukraine, with Ukrainian and Russian negotiators set to resume talks after Russia attacked a base near the Polish border and fighting rages across the country.
A flurry of Russian missiles hit Ukraine’s Yavoriv International Peace and Security Center, a base just 15 miles (25 km) from the Polish border that previously housed NATO military instructors, killing 35 people and injuring 134, a Ukrainian official said on Sunday.
Violence continued on Monday morning, with two people killed in a shelling on a residential building in the capital.
But hopes for diplomatic progress arose after Russia and Ukraine gave positive assessments after talks over the weekend.
“Russia is already starting to talk constructively,” Ukrainian negotiator Mikhail Podolyak said in an online video. “I think that we will achieve some results literally in a matter of days.”
The Russian delegate at the talks, Leonid Slutsky, according to RIA, said that they have made significant progress and, perhaps, the delegations will soon be able to come to draft agreements. Neither side said what they would cover. Three rounds of talks between the two sides in Belarus, the last of which took place last Monday, have focused mainly on humanitarian issues.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that the country’s delegations communicate daily via video link, and the clear goal of his negotiators was to “do everything” to arrange his meeting with Putin. “We must hold on. We must fight. And we will win,” Zelensky said in a nightly video message. Putin said on Friday that there had been some “positive developments” in the talks, but did not elaborate.
The talks began after Britain said Russian naval forces were blockading Ukraine’s Black Sea coast and cutting off the country from maritime trade.
In a report released late Sunday evening, the UK Department of Defense said a “remote blockade” of Russia’s navy has effectively isolated Ukraine from maritime trade, and the force continues to carry out missile strikes against targets across the country.
The ministry also noted that Russia carried out one amphibious landing in the Sea of Azov and “may conduct further such operations in the coming weeks.”
The conflict is escalating to effectively block maritime trade with Ukraine as countries step up efforts to reach a diplomatic solution to the devastating conflict.
Talks between the US and China will also take place on Monday, which will be closely monitored as concerns grow over the possibility of Beijing backing Putin’s war effort.
Jake Sullivan, US national security adviser, will meet with his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi in Rome amid reports that Russia has asked China for weapons to support its half-hearted invasion of Ukraine.
Liu Pengyu, a spokesman for the US embassy in Washington, told CNN he “never heard” of Russia’s arms requests, noting that China’s priority is to ensure that the situation does not escalate or spiral out of control.
The US will try to persuade China not to supply arms to Russia in talks that the White House sees as critical not only to the war in Ukraine, but to the future global balance of power.
US President Joe Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron stressed their commitment to holding Russia accountable for its invasion of Ukraine in a call Sunday, the White House said in a statement. Also on Sunday, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and his Ukrainian counterpart Dmitry Kuleba discussed diplomatic efforts to stop Russia’s invasion of the neighboring country.
In other developments:
Ramzan Kadyrovhead of the Chechen region of Russia, It is reported that in Ukraine along with Russian troops, according to footage published by Chechen TV channels and posted on Kadyrov’s Telegram account.
Instagram was reportedly unavailable in Russia after state media and communications regulator of Russia, Roskomnadzor said the platform will be banned on Sunday eveningciting the social networking site “calls for violence against Russians” as the reason for the embargo.
Pregnant woman rescued from bombed-out Mariupol maternity hospital diesas is her child, according to AP.
The upsurge of diplomacy came after Russia received warnings from NATO on Sunday following the escalation of the war in Ukraine, striking a major military base near the alliance’s border, killing at least 35 people and injuring 134 others, and a US journalist was killed by Russian troops in a city near Kiev.
The airstrikes on the Yavoriv base in Ukraine’s far west came hours after the Kremlin, which said the site held Western military equipment destined for Ukrainian forces, called western supply lines to Ukraine “legitimate targets.”
A Russian military spokesman said that up to 180 “foreign mercenaries and a large shipment of foreign weapons” were destroyed during the attack.
The UK said the incident marked a “significant escalation” in the conflict, and the attack’s proximity to Poland’s border, less than 10 miles away, prompted the US to warn that any shelling, even accidental, of a neighboring NATO country would trigger a full-force NATO response.
Sullivan said the US is consulting with allies and is in direct contact with the Kremlin to warn against the use of chemical weapons amid fears that Russia could pave the way for their use.
Describing the bombing of the Yavoriv International Center for Peacekeeping and Security, 27-year-old Stepan Chuma, an EMERCOM officer who rushed to the scene with his colleagues, said: “My windows were shaking. The whole house vibrated. It was dark. The sky lit up with two explosions.
The attack prompted Zelenskiy to repeat his pleas to NATO for a no-fly zone, and he warned the alliance that it was in danger. “If you don’t close our skies, it’s only a matter of time before Russian missiles fall on your territory, on NATO territory,” he said in a video message late last night.
The facility in Yavoriv, which was attacked by Russia on Sunday, previously housed foreign military instructors from Britain, the US and elsewhere, but it is not known if they were at the base. Ukraine conducted most of its pre-invasion exercises with NATO countries there, with the last major exercise taking place in September. NATO denies it has any personnel in Ukraine, and the Pentagon said its last men left weeks ago.
The attack is considered the most westerly carried out by Russia in 18 days of fighting.
With Reuters