LVIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian and Ukrainian negotiators held a new round of talks on Monday, even as Russian military forces continued their punitive campaign to take over the Ukrainian capital with fighting and artillery fire in the suburbs of Kyiv.
With an airstrike on a military base near the Polish border, the war has come perilously close to NATO’s doorstep, and talks have raised hopes for progress in evacuating civilians from besieged Ukrainian cities and bringing essential supplies to areas lacking food, water and medical supplies.
“Everyone is waiting for news. We will definitely report back in the evening,” President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky said in a new video message.
The talks, which are taking place via videoconference, are the fourth round involving high-ranking officials from the two countries and the first in a week. Previous discussions have taken place in person in Belarus and have not resulted in breakthroughs in cessation of hostilities in Ukraine or lasting agreements on humanitarian routes.
“Communication is going on, but hard,” Ukrainian Presidential Aide Mykhailo Podolyak tweeted, along with a photo of the two sides meeting via video link. Earlier, Podoliak said that the negotiators would discuss “peace, a ceasefire, an immediate withdrawal of troops and security guarantees.”
Air raid alerts sounded in cities and towns across the country overnight, from the Russian border in the east to the Carpathians in the west, as fighting continued on the outskirts of Kyiv. Ukrainian officials said Russian troops had shelled several suburbs of the capital, which are the main political and strategic target of their invasion.
Ukrainian authorities said two people were killed and seven were injured in a Russian attack on an aircraft factory in Kyiv, causing a large fire. The Antonov factory is Ukraine’s largest aircraft factory and is best known for producing many of the world’s largest cargo aircraft.
Russian artillery shelling also hit a nine-story residential building in the northern Obolonsky district of the city, killing two more people, authorities said. Firefighters worked to rescue the survivors, carefully carrying the injured woman on a stretcher away from the blackened and still smoking building.
According to officials, a deputy of the city council of the city of Brovary, east of Kyiv, was killed in the battle. Shells also hit the Kyiv suburbs of Irpen, Bucha and Gostomel, where some of the fiercest fighting has taken place in Russia’s stalled attempt to seize the capital, local officials said.
Airstrikes were reported throughout the country, including Nikolaev in the south and Chernigov in the north, where most of the city was without power. During the night, explosions also took place around the Russian-occupied Black Sea port of Kherson.
In the eastern city of Kharkiv, firefighters doused the remains of a four-story residential building on a street lined with apartments and shops. Ukrainian emergency services said the building was struck, leaving smoldering piles of wood and metal. It is not known if there are any casualties.
The besieged southern city of Mariupol, where the war had caused the greatest human suffering, remained cut off despite previous negotiations to set up aid or evacuation convoys.
“The city is surrounded and civilians cannot get out of it today,” said Robert Mardini, director general of the International Committee of the Red Cross. He said the situation for the besieged civilians was “nothing less than a nightmare”.
A pregnant woman who became a symbol of Ukraine’s suffering when she was photographed being carried out of a bombed-out maternity hospital in Mariupol has died with her baby, the Associated Press reported. Images of a woman being carried in an ambulance on a stretcher circled the world, representing the horror of the attack on the most innocent people of mankind.
Ukraine announced plans for new humanitarian aid and evacuation corridors on Monday, though continued shelling caused similar efforts to fail last week, including on Sunday.
The UN has recorded the deaths of at least 596 civilians since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, though it believes the actual number is much higher. Millions of people have fled their homes and more than 2.8 million have fled to Poland and other neighboring countries in what the UN refugee agency says is the biggest refugee crisis in Europe since World War II.
Since the invasion of Ukraine began, Moscow has launched a multilateral attack. Russia’s military is larger and better equipped than Ukraine’s, but its forces have faced tougher-than-expected resistance, backed by Western military support that has upset Russian President Vladimir Putin.
As their advance slowed in several areas, they bombarded several cities relentlessly, hitting two dozen medical facilities and a large number of residential buildings.
The war expanded on Sunday when Russian missiles fired at a military training base in western Ukraine that had previously served as an important center of cooperation between Ukraine and NATO.
The attack killed 35 people, Ukrainian officials said, and the base’s proximity to the borders of Poland and other NATO members raised fears that the Western military alliance could be drawn into Europe’s biggest ground conflict since World War II.
Speaking on Sunday evening, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called it a “black day” and again called on NATO leaders to establish a no-fly zone over his country, which the West rejected for fear of starting a direct confrontation with a nuclear Russia.
“If you do not close our skies, it is only a matter of time before Russian missiles fall on your territory. NATO territory. To the homes of citizens of NATO countries,” Zelensky said.
Ukraine said Moscow’s troops, however, were unable to make significant gains between Sunday and Monday. The Russian Defense Ministry gave a different estimate, saying its forces had advanced 11 kilometers (7 miles) and reached five cities north of Mariupol, the capture of which could help Russia establish a land corridor to Crimea, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014.
Russia’s latest attack on its former Soviet neighbor has shaken up post-Cold War security with unpredictable and dangerous consequences.
The U.S. says Russia has asked China for military equipment to use in Ukraine after the West imposed tough economic sanctions to slow down the Russian economy and the invasion met stronger-than-expected resistance from Ukraine.
The request heightened tensions over the ongoing war ahead of Monday’s meeting in Rome between top aides to the US and Chinese governments. US President Joe Biden is sending his national security adviser to Rome to meet with a Chinese official over fears that Beijing is spreading Russian disinformation and could help Moscow avoid Western economic sanctions.
In his talks with senior Chinese foreign policy adviser Yang Jiechi, Sullivan will seek limits on what Beijing does for Moscow.
The strike of Russian cruise missiles on a military base in western Ukraine is also of international importance. The International Peace and Security Center near Yavoriv has long been used to train Ukrainian soldiers, often with instructors from the US and other NATO member states. According to the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, in addition to 35 dead, 134 people were injured.
The base is less than 25 kilometers (15 miles) from the Polish border and has hosted NATO exercises, making it a powerful symbol of Russia’s long-standing fear that the expansion of the 30-member Western military alliance to include former Soviet republics threatens its security. — something that NATO denies.
NATO said Sunday it currently has no personnel in Ukraine, although the United States has increased the number of US troops stationed in Poland, a NATO member Sullivan, the White House national security adviser, said the West would respond if Russian strikes will be applied outside the country. Ukraine also got into any NATO members, even by accident.
Ina Padi, a 40-year-old Ukrainian woman who crossed the border with her family, was taking refuge in a fire station in Wielkie Oczy, Poland, when she was awakened Sunday morning by an explosion from abroad that shook her windows.
“At that moment, I realized, even if we are free from it, (the war) still haunts us,” she said.
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Associated Press journalists from around the world contributed to this report.
Follow AP reporting on the Ukraine crisis at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine.