The story goes on under the ad Western intelligence officials and others say Moscow appears to be changing tactics to focus more strongly. in the eastern part of Donbass, where the invasion began, after attempts to overthrow the capital Kyiv and other major cities have stopped. Ukrainian forces have retaken Trostanets, a town south of Sumy about 20 miles northeast of Ukraine’s border with Russia, a senior U.S. defense official has said. Ukrainian officials say the government has regained control of Irpin, a suburb of the capital Kiev. Irpin Mayor Alexandar Markushin said in a video released Monday that the area had been recovered and that the “sweep” was under way. Speaking from inside a vehicle and dressed in a green military-style vest, he told suburban residents not to return yet, as fighting was ongoing. Ukrainian military officials separately said in a Facebook post that several Russian units had retreated to Chernobyl in northern Ukraine and across the border with Belarus to renew their combat capability “as they have suffered significant casualties.” The story goes on under the ad Despite the modest gains, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said there was no indication that Russia had completely overturned plans to take over or attack Kyiv. “According to our information, the Russian Federation has not given up 100 percent of its efforts if it does not at least besiege the Ukrainian capital,” Ukrainian Defense Ministry official Sergei Rudskoi told reporters. Rudskoy also provided information on Russian casualties, which could not be verified independently by the Washington Post. He said the Russian military had lost 17,000 people, 1,694 armored vehicles, 586 tanks, 302 artillery pieces, 95 missile systems, 123 aircraft and 66 drones. NATO last week estimated that between 7,000 and 15,000 Russian soldiers had been killed. The Pentagon said in a statement that Russian forces continued to advance into southern Ukraine, with major gains in the besieged city of Mariupol, and that some units were still battling logistics and low morale. The story goes on under the ad The mayor of Mariupol has again called for the emergency evacuation of the 160,000 civilians left in the city, who have been left without basic necessities such as food and electricity for weeks under Russian blockade and heavy bombardment. However, Ukrainian officials said there would be no immediate efforts to evacuate civilians from besieged cities via humanitarian corridors, citing “potential challenges” from Russian forces. However, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk told the Telegram on Monday morning that 586 people had fled Mariupol in their own vehicles on Sunday. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Sunday he would like to meet with Putin in a neutral country for possible talks, setting a more conciliatory tone ahead of talks in Turkey on Tuesday. He also said that Ukraine was open to giving up its NATO ambitions, an obvious concession to Moscow, provided that Russian troops withdrew from the country. The story goes on under the ad The remarks, made in a rare interview with Russian journalists, were quickly censored in Russia, which has tighter media controls to protect the Kremlin’s account of the war. Russian officials have downgraded expectations for talks. “So far, we can not and will not talk about progress,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peshkov told reporters on Monday. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Monday agreed to calls for an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine to pave the way for “serious political negotiations”, adding that he was in close contact with countries such as Turkey, Qatar, Israel and India, China, France and Germany will discuss mediation plans. The story goes on under the ad Turkey has also called for a reduction in the conflict. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan told Putin by telephone Sunday that a ceasefire and efforts to improve humanitarian conditions were needed. The country’s proximity to the conflict has not only disrupted trade but has also raised security alarms. The defense ministries of Turkey and Romania have been working in recent days to defuse potentially explosive ordnance, amid concerns that real weapons could be swept across Ukraine’s southern shores to its Black Sea neighbors, according to . The Pentagon has said it is deploying about 240 troops and six German Navy cyber warplanes in a bid to bolster NATO forces in Eastern Europe. The story goes on under the ad “They are not being developed to be used against Russian forces in Ukraine,” said Pentagon spokesman John Kirby. “They are being fully developed in line with our efforts to strengthen NATO’s deterrent and defense capabilities.” However, the move is likely to anger Russia, which has cited NATO expansion into Europe as a pressure point in its decision to invade Ukraine. Kirby said the planes would not be used to disrupt Russian communications, but would help boost security in Eastern Europe. Analysts say Biden’s comment at the weekend calling for Putin’s ouster would likely escalate tensions and reaffirm anti-US rhetoric in Moscow. Biden insisted on Monday that “nothing was going back” and would not apologize. But he also reiterated that he did not call for a change of regime in Moscow. Since the invasion began, more than 3.8 million Ukrainians have fled the country to the European Union – more than half of them children, according to EU officials. Most of the refugees have fled to neighboring countries, most notably Poland. with about 1 million traveling to other countries across the bloc, EU Home Affairs Commissioner Elva Johansson told a news conference in Brussels on Monday. Exits from Ukraine have slowed, however, with daily arrivals shrinking from a ceiling of 100,000 a day to about 40,000, Johansson said. The story goes on under the ad Inside Russia, the battle for the use of foreign social media continued on Monday in the middle of Moscow. suppression on sites that report information outside of the official Kremlin narrative. Robyn Dixon and Mary Ilyushina in Riga, Latvia. Emily Rauhala in Brussels. Annabelle Timsit, Kareem Fahim and Zeynep Karatas in Istanbul. and Julian Mark, Brittany Shammas and Maite Fernández in Washington DC contributed to this report.
