Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Fomin said the move was intended to boost confidence in the talks, as several rounds of negotiations failed to stop what has turned into a bloody campaign of corruption.
The announcement was met with skepticism by the US and others.
While Russia has portrayed it as a gesture of goodwill, it comes as the Kremlin’s troops have succumbed to fierce Ukrainian resistance that has dashed President Vladimir Putin’s hopes for a quick military victory.  Late last week and again on Tuesday, Russia appeared to be withdrawing its military targets, saying its “main goal” now was to gain control of the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine.
US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said he saw no indication that the talks were proceeding “constructively” and suggested that Russian signs of withdrawal could be an attempt by Moscow to “deceive the people and divert attention”. ».
“There is what Russia is saying and there is what Russia is doing, and we are focusing on the latter,” Blinken said in Morocco.  “And what Russia is doing is the continuing brutality of Ukraine.”
He added: “If they somehow believe that an attempt to subjugate only the eastern part of Ukraine or the southern part of Ukraine … can succeed, then once again they are deeply fooling themselves.”
Fomin said Moscow had decided to “fundamentally cut off military activity in the direction of Kiev and Chernihiv” in order to “increase mutual trust and create the conditions for further negotiations.”  He did not immediately specify what that would mean in practical terms.
The Ukrainian military says it has withdrawn troops from Kyiv and Chernihiv.  Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told CNN “we have not seen anything to confirm” reports that Russia was withdrawing significant forces from Kyiv.  “But what we have seen in the last two days is that they have stopped trying to move on to Kyiv.”
Rob Lee, a military expert at the US-based Institute for Foreign Policy Research, wrote on Twitter: “I do not have the strength to surround the city.”
Negotiators from Russia and Ukraine met in Istanbul on Tuesday, their first face-to-face talks in two weeks.  Previous talks, conducted in person in Belarus or on video, have made no progress towards ending the more than a month-long war that has killed thousands and displaced more than 10 million Ukrainians, including nearly 4 million leave the country.
Fomin said Tuesday that progress had been made, adding that “negotiations to prepare an agreement on Ukraine’s neutrality and non-nuclear status, as well as to provide security guarantees to Ukraine, are focused on practical issues.”
The Ukraine group, meanwhile, has set a detailed framework for a peace deal under which the country will remain neutral, but its security will be guaranteed by a group of third countries, including the United States, Britain, France and Turkey. of China and Poland.  an arrangement similar to the NATO principle “an attack on one is an attack on all”.
Ukraine also said it would be willing to hold talks over a 15-year period on the future of the Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula, with the two countries agreeing not to use their armed forces to resolve the issue. Meanwhile.
Russia’s views on the proposals were not immediately clear.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoλουlu said the talks had made “substantial” progress and the two sides had reached “consensus and mutual understanding” on certain issues.
He said the meeting would be followed by a meeting between the foreign ministers of Russia and Ukraine indefinitely.  A meeting between the presidents of Russia and Ukraine is also “on the agenda,” he said.
Moscow has asked Ukraine, among other things, to give up any hope of joining the NATO alliance, which it considers a threat.
Ahead of the talks, President Volodymyr Zelensky said his country was ready to declare its neutrality.  Zelensky also said he was open to a compromise on Donbass, the predominantly Russian-speaking area where Moscow-backed rebels have been waging a separatist war for eight years.
However, even as negotiators gathered in Istanbul, Russian forces stormed an oil depot in western Ukraine late Monday and opened an open hole Tuesday morning in a nine-storey government building in the southern port city of Mykolaiv.  At least seven people were killed in the attack, Zelenski said.
“It’s terrible. They were waiting for people to go to work” before hitting the building, said regional governor Vitaly Kim.  “I slept. I’m lucky.”
In other developments:
The head of the UN nuclear monitoring service has arrived in Ukraine to try to ensure the safety of the country’s nuclear facilities.  Russian forces have taken control of the decommissioned Chernobyl plant, which suffered the worst nuclear accident in the world in 1986, and the active Zaporizhzhia plant, where a building was damaged in the fighting.
“Russia has destroyed more than 60 religious buildings across the country in just over a month of war, with most of the damage concentrated near Kyiv and in the east,” Ukraine’s military said in a statement.
– Bloomberg announced that it has suspended operations in Russia and Belarus.  Customers in both countries will not have access to any Bloomberg financial products, he said.
Roman Abramovich, a longtime Putin ally who has been sanctioned by Britain and the European Union, was in the Istanbul conference room.  Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peshkov said the owner of the Chelsea football team was serving as an unofficial mediator approved by both countries.  However, the mystery about his role has been intensified by the news that he may have been poisoned during a previous round of talks.
In a battle that has turned into a stalemate, Ukrainian forces have recaptured Irpin, a key suburb northwest of the capital Kiev, Zelensky said late Monday.  But he warned that Russian troops were regrouping to retake the area.
Ukrainian forces also took control of the Trostyanets, south of Sumy in the northeast, after weeks of Russian occupation that left a devastated landscape.
Arriving in the city on Monday a little later, the Associated Press saw the bodies of two Russian soldiers in the forest and the Russian tanks were sitting burned and twisted.  A red “Z” meant a Russian truck, with its windshield broken, near stacked boxes of ammunition.  Ukrainian forces over a tank shone the signs of victory.  Stunned residents lined up among the charred buildings, asking for help.
It was not clear where the Russian troops went and under what conditions they fled.
Putin’s ground forces have been thwarted not only by stronger-than-expected Ukrainian resistance, but by what Western officials say are Russian regular mistakes, bad morale, shortages of food, fuel and equipment for cold weather and other problems.
Reinforcing what the military said last week, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said on Tuesday that “the liberation of Donbass” was now Moscow’s main goal.
While this presents a possible exit strategy for Putin, it has also raised fears in Ukraine that the Kremlin intends to divide the country and force it to hand over part of its territory.
——
Karmanau reported from Lviv, Ukraine.  Associated Press reporters around the world contributed to this report.


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