Ukraine delegation has arrived for peace talks with Russia
at the Belarus border.
Russia and Ukraine were preparing Monday for their first
talks since Moscow’s invasion, as fighting raged and Western-led sanctions
started to bite with the ruble collapsing.
Ukraine said Sunday it had agreed to send a delegation to
meet Russian representatives on the border with Belarus, which would be the
foes’ first public contact since war erupted.
Belarus announced Monday that the venue for the talks had
been prepared and they would start as soon as the delegations arrived.
However, with his government reporting hundreds of civilian
deaths and Russian troops besieging key cities, Ukrainian President Volodymyr
Zelensky said he was sceptical about the talks.
“As always: I do not really believe in the outcome of this
meeting, but let them try,” he said.
Russia invaded on Thursday and quickly announced it had
neutralised key military facilities, but fierce fighting has since raged and
Ukraine forces are reporting some success.
“The Russian occupiers have reduced the pace of the
offensive,” the general staff of the Ukraine armed forces said.
The United States has also said that Ukraine forces, backed
by Western arms, are stymieing the advance of Russian troops.
Putin on Sunday ordered Russia’s nuclear forces onto high
alert in response to what he called “unfriendly” steps by the West. Russia has
the world’s largest arsenal of nuclear weapons and a huge cache of ballistic
missiles.
The United States, the world’s second largest nuclear power,
slammed Putin’s order as “totally unacceptable”.
Germany said Putin’s nuclear order was because his offensive
had “halted” and was not going to plan.
– Economic pressure –
The campaign by the United States and its allies to build
economic pressure on Russia also showed more signs on Monday of having an
impact.
Russia’s central bank announced Monday it was more than
doubling its key interest rate to 20 percent because the Russian economy’s
situation had “drastically changed”.
The value of the ruble also continued to collapse against
the dollar and the euro on the Moscow Stock Exchange on Monday.
And the European Central Bank warned Monday that the
European subsidiary of the Russian state-owned Sberbank was facing bankruptcy.
The Kremlin has brushed off sanctions, including those
targeting Putin personally, as a sign of Western impotence.
Among the sanctions, the West has said it would remove some
Russian banks from the SWIFT bank messaging system, and freeze central bank
assets.
The United States and its allies are seeking to continue
building the diplomatic and military pressure, as well as economic.
EU member states closed their airspace to Russian planes and
many pledged arms for Ukraine — but stressed they would not themselves intervene
militarily.
Brussels announced it would provide 450 million euros ($500
million) for Ukraine to buy weapons and ban Russian central bank transactions,
as well as restricting two Moscow-run media outlets.
British energy giant BP also said Sunday it was pulling its
19.75-percent stake in Rosneft, a blow to Russia’s key oil and gas sector,
which is partly reliant on Western technology.
The White House said it would hold a secure call with allies
and partners Monday to discuss “developments” in Russia’s attack on Ukraine and
“coordinate our united response”.
The UN General Assembly will hold a rare emergency session
Monday to discuss the conflict.
Also in response to hostilities, FIFA ordered Russia to play
its home international fixtures in neutral venues and warned it was considering
banning it from the 2022 World Cup.
– Defending cities–
On day four of an invasion that stunned the world, Ukrainian
forces said Sunday they had defeated a Russian incursion into Ukraine’s second
city Kharkiv, 500 kilometres (310 miles) east of Kyiv.
Ukrainian officials said they were fighting off Russian
forces in several other areas, and claimed that 4,300 Russian troops had been
killed.
The Ukrainian army said Monday morning that Russian forces
had “several times” attempted to storm the outskirts of Kyiv overnight, but all
attacks were repelled.
“The situation in the capital of our homeland is under
control,” said the army on Facebook.
Local media reported strong explosions heard throughout
Sunday night in both Kyiv and Kharkiv.
Presidential advisor Oleksiy Arestovich said on Telegram
early Monday the capital had been targeted overnight by three Russian missile
strikes, one of which was intercepted.
The southern city of Berdiansk is now occupied by Russian
soldiers, he added.
Ukraine has reported 352 civilian deaths, including 14
children, since the invasion began. Russia has acknowledged that a number of
its forces had been killed or injured.
– ‘Humanitarian
crisis’ –
The United Nations has put the civilian toll at 64 while the
EU said more than seven million people could be displaced by the conflict.
“We are witnessing what could become the largest
humanitarian crisis on our European continent in many, many years,” the EU
commissioner for crisis management Janez Lenarcic said.
Ukraine has called on its own civilians to fight Russia,
with a brewery in Lviv in the country’s west switching its production line from
beers to bombs, making Molotov cocktails for the volunteer fighters.
At the Medyka border crossing with Poland, volunteer
Jasinska said the long line of arrivals, mostly women and children, need warm
clothes.
Crossing Medyka with his family, Ajmal Rahmani, an Afghan
who fled Afghanistan for Ukraine four months before the US withdrawal, told
AFP: “I run from one war, come to another country and another war starts. Very
bad luck”.
Putin has said Russia’s actions are justified because it is
defending Moscow-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine.
The rebels have been fighting Ukrainian government forces
for eight years in a conflict that has killed more than 14,000 people.
AFP
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