Zelensky said in a video address to the Ukrainian people late Sunday that his government would prioritize Ukraine’s “territorial integrity” in talks in Istanbul. However, in comments to Russian journalists earlier in the day, Zelensky took a different stance, saying Ukraine was willing to take a neutral stance and compromise on the status of the eastern Donbass region as part of a peace deal. Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register In a video call that the Kremlin warned Russian media not to report, Zelensky said any deal must be guaranteed by third parties and put to a referendum. read more “Guarantees of security and neutrality, non-nuclear status of our state. We are ready to achieve that,” he added, speaking in Russian. Even with the talks approaching, the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence service, Kyrylo Budanov, has said that Russian President Vladimir Putin is aiming to occupy the eastern part of Ukraine. “In fact, it is an attempt to create North and South Korea in Ukraine,” he said, referring to the division of Korea after World War II. Zelensky urged the West to provide Ukraine with tanks, planes and missiles to repel Russian forces. In talks with Putin on Sunday, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan agreed to host the talks and called for a ceasefire and better humanitarian conditions, his office said. Ukrainian and Russian negotiators have confirmed that they will hold private talks. read more Top US officials said on Sunday that the United States was not pursuing a policy of regime change in Russia, with President Joe Biden saying at the end of his speech in Poland on Saturday that Putin “could not stay in power”. US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said Biden simply meant that Putin could not be “authorized to wage war” against Ukraine or anywhere else. read more After more than four weeks of fighting, Russia has failed to occupy any major Ukrainian cities and showed on Friday that it was limiting its ambitions to focus on security in the Donbass region, where Russian-backed separatists have been fighting the Ukrainian army for the past eight years. years. A local leader of the self-proclaimed People’s Republic of Luhansk said on Sunday that the region could soon hold a referendum on joining Russia, as happened in Crimea after Russia’s occupation of the Ukrainian peninsula in 2014. Crimeans overwhelmingly voted in favor of secession from Ukraine and accession to Russia – a vote that much of the world refused to recognize. Budanov predicted that the Ukrainian army would repel Russian forces by launching a guerrilla war. “Then there will be a relevant scenario for the Russians, how to survive,” he said. The representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine also rejected the discussions on any referendum in eastern Ukraine. “All fake referendums in the temporarily occupied territories are invalid and will have no legal force,” Oleg Nikolenko told Reuters. read more ‘DARK AND STUPID’ Moscow says targets for what Putin calls a “special military operation” include demilitarizing and “rewarding” its neighbor. Ukraine and its Western allies call it a pretext for an unprovoked invasion. Ukraine has described previous negotiations, some of which took place in Russia’s ally Belarus, as “very difficult”. The invasion has devastated several Ukrainian cities, caused a major humanitarian crisis and displaced some 10 million people, almost a quarter of Ukraine’s population. Tatiana Manek, who crossed the Danube by boat to Romania on Sunday with other refugees, said people in the city of Odessa were “very scared”, but would have stayed if it were not for her daughter. “It would be very difficult to provide the child with basic living conditions. So we decided to leave,” he said, holding a pet dog. In his blessing on Sunday, Pope Francis called for an end to the “cruel and irrational” conflict. read more HUMANITY CORRIDORS Russia has continued to move additional military units to the border with Ukraine and has launched missile and air strikes against Ukrainian forces and military infrastructure, including in the city of Kharkiv, the Ukrainian military said Sunday night. Ukraine has also expressed concern about the safety of the Russian-occupied abandoned Chernobyl nuclear power plant, the site of the worst political nuclear accident in the world in 1986. Russian forces have threatened to destroy a restricted ship built around the fourth reactor of the shipwrecked station, said Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk. He urged the United Nations to send a mission to assess the risks. read more Adviser to the Ukrainian Interior Ministry, Vadym Denysenko, said Russia had begun destroying Ukrainian fuel and food storage centers. Russia seems to be confirming this, saying its missiles destroyed a fuel depot on Saturday as well as a military repair plant near the western city of Lviv. read more Ukraine has launched small counterattacks as Russian forces try to encircle its forces in eastern Ukraine, an adviser to the Ukrainian president has said. The United Nations has confirmed 1,119 civilian deaths and 1,790 injuries across Ukraine, but says the true toll is likely to be higher. Ukraine announced on Sunday that 139 children have been killed and more than 205 injured so far in the conflict. Verestsuk said 1,100 people had been evacuated from the frontline areas, including the southern city of Mariupol, after Ukraine and Russia agreed to set up two “humanitarian corridors”. The besieged port, located between Crimea and the Russian-backed separatist eastern regions, has been devastated by weeks of heavy bombardment. Thousands of residents are housed in basements with scarce water, food, medicine or electricity. Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register Reports by Reuters reporters in Mariupol, Natalia Zinets and Maria Starkova in Lviv, Jarrett Renshaw in Warsaw and Lidia Kelly in Melbourne. Guy Faulconbridge in London and Matthias Williams. Written by Aidan Lewis, Crispian Balmer, Lincoln Feast and Lawrence Hurley. Editing: Daniel Wallis and Stephen Coates Our role models: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
