Ukraine has warned that peace talks with Moscow were in danger of collapse and said Russia was pounding areas in the east as US lawmakers vowed to swiftly approve a massive new weapons package for Kyiv.
Russian forces have turned their focus toward Ukraine’s east and south after failing to capture the capital in a nine-week assault that has turned cities to rubble, killed thousands and forced five million Ukrainians to flee abroad.
Moscow captured the city of Kherson in Ukraine’s south and its forces have mostly occupied the eastern port city of Mariupol, where United Nations efforts are under way to evacuate civilians and fighters holed up in a large steel plant.
Ukraine and Russia have not held face-to-face peace talks since March 29, and the atmosphere has soured over Ukrainian allegations that Russian troops carried out atrocities as they withdrew from areas near Kyiv. Moscow has denied the claims. The two sides have since held talks by video link.
In comments to journalists in Poland, which has taken in nearly three million Ukrainian refugees, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy expressed pessimism over the prospect of continued negotiations with Russia, blaming public anger with what he said were Russian atrocities.
“The risks that the talks will end are high because of what they (the Russians) have left behind them, the impression that they have a playbook on murdering people,” Interfax quoted Zelenskiy as telling Polish journalists.
Moscow says it launched its invasion in part over concerns that Ukraine might join the US-led NATO military alliance. Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said that Ukraine would have been given security guarantees from UN Security Council countries if it had been “honest” in negotiations.
“We got stuck because of their inconsistency, because of their desire to play games every time and – as far as I can guess – because of instructions they get from Washington, London and other capitals not to speed up the negotiating process,” Lavrov said in an interview reported by Russian news agencies.
Both the United States and Britain have voiced support for Ukraine in the talks but say it is vital to continue arming Kyiv. President Joe Biden on Thursday asked the US Congress for $US33 billion in new aid, including more than $US20 billion in weapons.
The funding has received bipartisan congressional support and House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she hoped to pass the package “as soon as possible”.
Putin calls Moscow’s actions a “special military operation” to disarm Ukraine, defend Russian-speaking people from persecution and prevent the United States using the country to threaten Russia.
Ukraine dismisses Putin’s claims of persecution and says it is fighting an imperial-style land grab aimed at fully capturing two eastern Ukrainian provinces, Donetsk and Luhansk, which are known as the Donbas.
Russia was pounding Donetsk’s whole front line with rockets, artillery, mortar bombs and aircraft in part to stop Ukrainian troops regrouping, Ukrainian officials said.
Ukraine’s military said Russia was preparing for offensives in the areas of Lyman in Donetsk and Severodonetsk and Popasna in Luhansk. In the south, Russia was “continuing to regroup, increase fire effectiveness and improve position”.
Russia also said its high precision long-range missiles had destroyed the production facilities of a rocket plant in Kyiv. Ukraine says Thursday’s attack struck a residential building, injuring civilians and killing a producer with US-backed broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
A US official confirmed the Kyiv attack had targeted military production, without saying if the target was destroyed.
The bloodiest fighting and worst humanitarian catastrophe of the war have been in Mariupol, reduced to a wasteland by two months of Russian bombardment and siege. Ukraine says 100,000 civilians remain in the city.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said during a visit to Kyiv on Thursday that intense discussion were under way to evacuate Ukrainians from Mariupol’s Azovstal steelworks.
