As war rages, Russia and Ukraine agree to talks
Categories: FOREIGN COUNTRIES
Ukrainian and Russian peace negotiators agreed to meet near the Belarusian border on Sunday, after Russian military forces reportedly suffered steep casualties but still made battlefield advances — trying to break through in Kyiv, the capital, and seize wider swaths of Donbass in the east.But even as tentative talks were announced, there was no immediate ceasefire declaration in the first large-scale war in Europe in decades. The peril only grew as Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his nuclear forces to move to a higher state of alert, while complaining acidly about Western economic sanctions and NATO military aid for Ukraine, even though Putin is the one who started the war.Putin had long refused direct negotiations with Ukraine to settle the eight-year war in Donbass, which Russia organized and financed. And initially, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy had rebuffed the offer of peace talks, saying Moscow had set preconditions that effectively amounted to Ukraine’s total surrender. A spokesman for Zelenskiy said that the answer to Moscow was the same expletive that Ukrainian marines used to insult a Russian warship before they were all reportedly killed. But by Sunday afternoon, there was a deal to meet at a checkpoint near the Ukrainian-Belarusian border, and Ukrainian officials said all preconditions were dropped.Some 4,300 Russian soldiers were killed or wounded, and 46 military aircraft, 146 tanks, and 706 armored vehicles were destroyed, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said at an afternoon news conference. “Hundreds of Russian soldiers became prisoners of war,” Kuleba said, noting the data was preliminary given battles were ongoing. “Ukraine is not falling,” he said, thanking allies for the support and urging them to keep it up. “We are bleeding, but we continue to successfully defend ourselves.”Zelenskiy, who on Sunday continued to command the war effort unshaven and wearing military green, posed for a selfie with Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov, who tweeted it, writing: “It’s impossible to break our defenders.” At a news conference following a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron, Putin complained that Ukraine did not accept Russia’s annexation of Crimea and he claimed that Kyiv had plans to retake the peninsula by military force.Russia’s main goals seemed to be to encircle Kyiv in a bid to topple the government, and to drive forces south from Kharkiv and north from near Mariupol near the Azov Sea, cutting off the Ukrainian forces that have been massed in Donbass to fight the separatists there. Separately on Sunday, Zelenskiy’s office announced the formation of a new unit, the International Legion of Territorial Defense of Ukraine, to be made up of foreigners who wish to fight for the country.“Foreigners willing to defend Ukraine and world order as part of the International Legion of Territorial Defense of Ukraine, I invite you to contact foreign diplomatic missions of Ukraine in your respective countries,” Kuleba said on Twitter. “Together we defeated Hitler, and we will defeat Putin, too.”The call for foreign soldiers followed an outpouring of voluntarism on behalf of Ukraine, including by hackers and other cyber experts who have taken to their keyboards in an effort to weaken Russia and undermine its military operation.