Russia vows to ‘radically reduce’ military activity in northern Ukraine

Russia vows to ‘radically reduce’ military activity in northern Ukraine

 

Potentially significant move comes as Moscow says ‘meaningful’ progress has been made at Istanbul peace talks

 

Jon Henley Europe correspondent

@jonhenley

Tue 29 Mar 2022 16.20 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/29/ukraine-russia-peace-talks-istanbul-war-kyiv

 

Russia has said it will significantly cut back its military activity in northern Ukraine after “meaningful” progress at peace talks in Istanbul, as Kyiv demanded international guarantees for the country’s security.

 

In a potentially significant shift more than a month after the start of the invasion, Russia’s deputy defence minister, Alexander Fomin, said Moscow would “radically reduce military activity in the direction of Kyiv and Chernihiv”.

 

The move was aimed at “increasing mutual trust, creating the right conditions for future negotiations and reaching the final aim of signing a peace deal with Ukraine”, Fomin said, after talks between the two sides had “moved into a practical field”.

 

Speaking alongside Fomin, Russian negotiator Vladimir Medinsky called the talks “meaningful” and said Vladimir Putin would consider Ukraine’s proposals. A meeting between the Russian president and his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, was possible in the future, Medinsky said.

 

It is unclear if Russia’s promise to cut back its attacks in the north was a genuine attempt to build trust or a strategic decision. Unable swiftly to encircle the Ukrainian capital after invading, Russia has recently refocused its attention on Ukraine’s south and east.

 

Ukrainian negotiator David Arakhamia, who said there were “sufficient” conditions for a direct meeting between the two heads of state, outlined Ukraine’s call for “an international mechanism of security guarantees” similar to Nato’s article 5, which commits alliance members to defend one another.

 

The senior Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said the guarantee would involve countries such as the US, UK, Turkey, France and Germany being “legally actively involved in protecting [Ukraine] from any aggression” in an arrangement backed by their respective parliaments.

 

The Turkish foreign minister, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, said “both sides are getting closer at every stage”, adding that the talks should lead in the first instance to a meeting between the Russian and Ukrainian foreign ministers.

 

The comments on Tuesday raised hopes of a possible resolution to the conflict, with the US president, Joe Biden, saying he would discuss the “latest developments” in a call with the British, French, German and Italian leaders.

 

 

But in a speech to the Danish parliament, Zelenskiy said at least seven people had been killed and 22 injured in a Russian strike on a regional government building in the southern port of Mykolaiv. “People are still going through the rubble,” he said.

 

Zelenskiy also called the Russian bombardment and siege of the port city of Mariupol, where local officials have said at least 5,000 people have died, a “crime against humanity … happening in front of the eyes of the whole planet, in real time”.

 

Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, had earlier opened the talks – the two delegations’ first face-to-face meeting in more than a fortnight – at the Dolmabahçe Palace in Istanbul, urging both sets of negotiators to “put an end to this tragedy”. Erdoğan said each side had “legitimate concerns”, but added: “We have now entered a period where concrete results are needed.” It should be “possible to reach a solution acceptable to the international community”, he said.

 

Roman Abramovich, the oligarch who has been playing an unspecified mediating role, was in the room for the start of the negotiations, which according to Ukrainian TV began with “a cold welcome and no handshake”.

 

The Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Abramovich, a Putin ally, was not an official member of Moscow’s delegation, but confirmed he was attending. Peskov said reports that Abramovich had been poisoned during a previous informal round of negotiations were untrue and part of an “information war”.

 

Both sides had played down hopes of an early breakthrough, as Kyiv sought a ceasefire without compromising on its sovereignty or territorial integrity. Peskov said it would become clear “on Tuesday or Wednesday” whether the talks were promising.

 

Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said Ukraine had no intention of “trading people, land or sovereignty” and a senior US state department official said Putin did not seem ready to make any compromises to end the war.

 

Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, which began on 24 February, has killed an estimated 20,000 people, forced more than 10 million from their homes – including more than 3.8 million who have fled the country – and triggered an unprecedented range of western economic sanctions against Russia.

 

Kyiv has suggested Moscow may be more flexible after failing in its initial aim of encircling the Ukrainian capital and forcing the government’s rapid capitulation, as its forces were held up by logistical failings, heavy losses and stiff Ukrainian resistance.

 

“We have destroyed the myth of the invincible Russian army,” the mayor of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko, said. “We are resisting against the aggression of one of the strongest armies in the world and have succeeded in making them change their goals.”

 

Ukrainian intelligence said on Tuesday that Putin was now seeking to compensate for his “weakened, disoriented” forces by trying to destroy cities through “indiscriminate artillery fire and rocket-bomb attacks”.

 

Moscow said last week it was shifting its focus to expanding the territory held by pro-Russian separatists in the Donbas region, where Zelenskiy has previously hinted some compromise might be possible. Zelenskiy has also said repeatedly, however, that while Ukraine might be prepared to accept some kind of neutral status with international guarantees, the country’s “sovereignty and territorial integrity” remained its top priority in any talks.

 

Putin has demanded the “demilitarisation and denazification” of Ukraine, as well as the imposition of neutral status and recognition of Donbas and Crimea, which Moscow seized in 2014, as no longer part of Ukrainian territory.

 

Ukrainian forces retook Irpin, north-west of Kyiv, from Russian troops, who were regrouping to take the area back, Zelenskiy said late on Monday. “We still have to fight, we have to endure,” he said. “We can’t raise expectations.”

 

Humanitarian conditions remain catastrophic in several southern and eastern cities, including Mariupol. Ukraine’s deputy prime minister Iryna Vereshchuk said she hoped three humanitarian corridors would be opened on Tuesday to evacuate civilians from besieged towns and cities.

 

Earlier peace talks, both by video and in person, failed to make progress towards a ceasefire. The latest round takes place against the background of allegations that delegates to previous talks in Kyiv in early March were poisoned.

 

A source with direct knowledge of the incident said that Abramovich and a Ukrainian MP and peace negotiator, Rustem Umerov, had suffered symptoms consistent with poisoning earlier this month. Both men, who consumed only chocolate and water, were treated for symptoms that reportedly included loss of sight and peeling skin. The allegations were first reported in the Wall Street Journal and by the investigative outlet Bellingcat.