Talks between Russia and Ukraine to resume after
deadly attack on military base
Zelenskiy pushes for meeting with Putin as Moscow
draws warnings from Nato after strikes on a major military base close to the
alliance’s border
Luke
Harding in Yavoriv, Peter Beaumont and Lorenzo Tondo Tondo in Lviv and agencies
Mon 14 Mar
2022 04.51 GMT
Diplomatic
efforts to end the war in Ukraine have stepped up, with Ukrainian and Russian
negotiators set to resume talks, after Russia attacked a base near the Polish
border and fighting raged across the country.
A barrage
of Russian missiles hit Ukraine’s Yavoriv International Centre for Peacekeeping
and Security, a base just 15 miles (25 km) from the Polish border that has
previously hosted Nato military instructors, killing 35 people and wounding 134,
a Ukrainian official said on Sunday.
But hopes
of diplomatic progress were raised after Russia and Ukraine gave positive
assessments after weekend negotiations.
“Russia is
already beginning to talk constructively,” Ukrainian negotiator Mykhailo
Podolyak said in a video online. “I think that we will achieve some results
literally in a matter of days.”
A Russian
delegate to the talks, Leonid Slutsky, was quoted by the RIA news agency as
saying they had made significant progress and it was possible the delegations
could soon reach draft agreements. Neither side said what these would cover.
Three rounds of talks between the two sides in Belarus, most recently last
Monday, had focused mainly on humanitarian issues.
Ukrainian
president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the countries’ delegations have been
speaking daily by video link and a clear aim of his negotiators was to “do
everything” to arrange for him to meet Putin. “We must hold on. We must fight.
And we will win,” Zelenskiy said in a late night video speech. Putin said on
Friday there had been some “positive shifts” in the talks but did not
elaborate.
The talks
come after the UK said Russian naval forces had blockaded Ukraine’s Black Sea
coast and cut the country off from maritime trade.
In an
update late Sunday, the UK defence ministry said the “distant blockade” by
Russia’s navy had effectively isolated Ukraine from maritime trade and forces
continued missile strikes on targets across the country.
The
ministry also noted that Russia had conducted one amphibious landing in the Sea
of Azov and “could look to conduct further such operations in the coming
weeks.”
The escalation
of the conflict to effectively block maritime trade from Ukraine comes as
countries stepped up efforts to reach a diplomatic solution to the devastating
conflict.
Closely
watched talks will also be held on Monday between the US and China, as concerns
grow over the possibility of Beijing providing support to Putin’s war effort.
Jake
Sullivan, the US national security adviser, will meet his Chinese counterpart,
Yang Jiechi, in Rome amid reports that Russia has asked China for weapons to
bolster its faltering invasion of Ukraine.
A
spokesperson for the US embassy in Washington, Liu Pengyu, told CNN he had
“never heard” of the Russian arms requests, noting that China’s priority was to
ensure the situation does not escalate or get out of control.
The US will
try to persuade China not to supply arms to Russia at the talks which the White
House sees as critically important not just for the war in Ukraine but also for
the future of the global balance of power.
US
president Joe Biden and French president Emmanuel Macron underscored in a call
on Sunday their commitment to holding Russia accountable for the invasion of
Ukraine, the White House said in a statement. Also on Sunday, US secretary of
state Antony Blinken and his Ukrainian counterpart, Dmytro Kuleba, discussed
diplomatic efforts to stop Russia’s invasion of its neighbour.
In other
developments:
Ramzan
Kadyrov, the leader of Russia’s Chechnya region, is reportedly in Ukraine
alongside Russian forces, according to footage shared by Chechen television
channels and posted to Kadyrov’s Telegram account.
Instagram
was reportedly down inside Russia after Russia’s state media and communication
regulator, Rozcomnadzor, said the platform would be banned on Sunday night,
citing the social networking site “calls for violence against Russians” as the
reason behind the embargo.
The flurry
of diplomacy comes as Russia drew warnings from Nato on Sunday after it
escalated its war in Ukraine with strikes on a major military base close to the
alliance’s border, killing at least 35 people and injuring 134 more, while a US
journalist was killed by Russian forces in a town outside Kyiv.
The
airstrikes on the Yavoriv base in the far-west of Ukraine came hours after the
Kremlin, which said western military equipment destined for Ukrainian forces
was being stored at the facility, had described western supply lines into
Ukraine as “legitimate targets”.
A Russian
military spokesperson claimed that up to 180 “foreign mercenaries and a large
consignment of foreign weapons” were destroyed in the attack.
Britain
said the incident marked a “significant escalation” of the conflict and the
proximity of the attack to Poland’s border, less than 10 miles away, prompted
the US to warn that any fire, even accidental, on a neighbouring Nato country
would trigger a full-force Nato response.
Sullivan
said the US was consulting allies and in contact with the Kremlin directly to
warn against the use of chemical weapons amid fears that Russia may be
preparing the ground for the use of them.
Describing
the bombing of the Yavoriv International Centre for Peacekeeping and Security,
Stepan Chuma, 27, an emergency worker who had hurried to the scene with his
colleagues, said: “My windows shook. The whole house vibrated. It was dark. The
sky lit up with two explosions.”
The attack
prompted Zelenskiy, to repeat his pleas for Nato to impose a no-fly zone, and
he warned the alliance that it was at risk. “If you don’t close our sky, it is
only a matter of time before Russian rockets fall on your territory, on Nato
territory,” he said in a video address late last night.
The Yavoriv
facility hit by Russia on Sunday has previously hosted foreign military
trainers from the UK, US and other countries, but it was not clear whether any
were at the base. Ukraine held most of its drills with Nato countries there
before the invasion, with the last major exercises in September. Nato denied it
had any personnel in Ukraine and the Pentagon said its last people had left
weeks ago.
The attack
is thought to be the westernmost carried out by Russia in 18 days of fighting.
With Reuters
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