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Kyiv and Moscow reached an “understanding” on ways to ease the suffering of people in Ukraine amid fighting that has killed thousands and prompted more than a million to flee the country, even as Russia said nothing would stop it subjugating its pro-western neighbour.
Russian troops consolidated control over the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson on Thursday and closed in on the Azov Sea port of Mariupol, while continuing to shell Kyiv, Kharkiv and other large cities and trying to take the town of Enerhodar, site of one of Europe’s biggest atomic power plants.
“The parties reached an understanding on joint provision of humanitarian corridors for the evacuation of the civilian population, as well as for the delivery of medicines and food to places where the fighting is most fierce,” said a Ukrainian delegate to the talks, presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak.
He said the meeting on the Belarus-Poland border also yielded tentative agreement on the possibility of “a temporary ceasefire for the period when the evacuation will take place, in the sectors where it is carried out”.
Russian envoy Vladimir Medinsky did not mention a possible ceasefire but said: “The main thing we decided on today was the issue of saving people – civilians – who are in the zone of military clashes . . . Russia calls on civilians who find themselves in this situation, if military actions continue, to use these humanitarian corridors.”
The United Nations says more than one million people have fled Ukraine since Russia invaded last week, most of them to neighbouring European Union states, and many others have left their homes and moved to relatively calm western parts of the country.
Directive
The EU’s 27 members agreed for the first time to activate a directive that will allow all Ukrainians fleeing the invasion to receive temporary residency in the bloc, as it prepares to face what may become the continent’s greatest exodus since the second World War.
Ukraine has said more than 2,000 civilians have been killed in Russia’s bombardment of towns and cities, and both Russia and Ukraine say thousands of each other’s troops have been killed in battle.
“Now on Ukrainian territory, our soldiers and officers are fighting for Russia . . . for the denazification and demilitarisation of Ukraine, so that we can’t be threatened by an ‘anti-Russia’ right on our borders that the West has been creating for years,” Russian president Vladimir Putin said on Thursday, repeating unfounded claims about the Kyiv government.
In a phone call with French president Emmanuel Macron, Mr Putin “emphasised that the tasks of the special military operation will be fulfilled in any event, and attempts to gain time by dragging out negotiations will only lead to additional demands [on Kyiv] in our negotiating position,” the Kremlin said.
A French presidential adviser said Mr Macron told Mr Putin that he was “making a major mistake” and “lying to himself” about Ukraine. “It will cost your country dearly, your country will end up isolated, weakened and under sanctions for a very long time.”
“There was nothing in what president Putin said that could reassure us,” the adviser added.
Footage
The Kremlin claims to be striking only military targets and accuses Kyiv of using its people as “human shields”, yet footage emerges from Ukraine every day of Russian bombs striking apartment blocks, office buildings, universities and other civilian sites.
The council of Mariupol accused Russian forces of “breaking food supplies, setting us up in a blockade . . . Deliberately, for seven days, they have been destroying [the city’s] critical life-support infrastructure. We have no light, water or heat again.”
Video footage from Enerhodar showed shelling and fighting on the outskirts of the town of 50,000 people, which is home to Ukraine’s biggest nuclear power station.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy repeated that he was ready to meet Mr Putin. “What do you want from us? Get off our land. If you don’t want to leave now, sit down with me at the negotiating table . . . What are you afraid of?”
The West continued to intensify sanctions on Russia’s business and political elite, and Moscow piled more pressure on critics of the Kremlin, prompting prominent liberal media outlets Ekho Moskvy and the Dozhd television channel to stop broadcasting.