Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Mach 18: Amidst continued shelling on the capital city of Kyiv and the outskirts of the western city of Lviv, the Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday accused Ukrainian authorities of stalling talks, but added that Moscow was ready to search for solutions as he spoke with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
“It was noted that the Kyiv regime is trying in every possible way to stall negotiations, putting forward more and more unrealistic proposals,” the Kremlin said. “Nevertheless, the Russian side is ready to continue to search for solutions in line with its well-known principled approaches,” it added.
Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the phone talks between Putin and Scholz “tough” but added that such contacts were still needed. Peskov said it was still early to talk about an agreement that Russian and Ukrainian negotiators could sign. “I can only state that the Russian delegation is showing a willingness to work much faster than it is doing now,” he told reporters.
“Unfortunately, the Ukrainian delegation is not ready to accelerate the pace of talks.” In talks with Scholz, Putin also stressed that Russian troops were “doing their best” to save civilians including through safe corridors, the Kremlin said, adding that some 43,000 people had been evacuated from the south-eastern city of Mariupol on Thursday. Putin will also speak on phone with French President Emmanuel Macron, Peskov said.
Media reports said Russian forces on Friday launched new missile strikes and shelling on the capital city of Kyiv and the outskirts of the western city of Lviv, as world leaders pushed for a probe of the Kremlin’s repeated attacks on civilian targets, including schools, hospitals and residential areas.
At least three blasts were heard in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv in the morning, said media reports, with the city mayor adding that Russian missiles struck an area near the airport of Lviv. Casualties climbed following persistent Russian shelling.
Three people have been killed after a multi-storey teaching building was shelled in the eastern city of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s state emergency service. Shells also hit the eastern city of Kramatorsk on Friday, killing two people and wounding six, Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said in an online post. Several missiles have hit military aircraft repair plant and damaged a bus repair facility near Lviv’s airport in western Ukraine, city Mayor Andriy Sadovyi said adding that the airport was safe ad no casualties were reported. An explosion was also reported in the northern part of capital Kyiv. At least 21 people were killed and 25 were injured on Thursday when Russian forces shelled a town in eastern Ukraine, local prosecutors said.
Ukrainian human rights ombudswoman Lyudmyla Denisova said so far 130 people have been rescued from the rubble of the theatre in Mariupol which had been hit by an air strike on Wednesday. In a televised address, Denisova stated that rescue work was underway at the site where people were sheltering underground before the building was hit. More than a thousand people, most of them children, had taken shelter in the theatre to escape from Russian shelling.
Foreign ministers from the Group of Seven leading economies are calling on Russia to comply with the International Court of Justice’s order to stop its attack on Ukraine and withdraw its military forces. Kremlin, on Thursday, rejected the U.N.’s top court’s ruling that ordered Russia to immediately suspend military operations in Kyiv. The U.N.’s International Court of Justice had ruled on Wednesday that Moscow should “immediately suspend military operations that it commenced on February 24 on the territory of Ukraine.
Britain’s broadcasting regulator revoked the licence of Russia’s state-funded television channel RT, in the latest international repercussion for Moscow. But despite battleground setbacks and punitive sanctions by the West, Putin has shown little sign of relenting. Russia has now established a no-fly zone over the Donbass region, media reports said.
The US, which this week announced $800 million in new military aid to Kyiv, has warned that Beijing is “considering directly assisting Russia with military equipment to use in Ukraine.” While the US says it wants to avoid direct confrontation with Russia, Chinese military aid to Moscow would pit Washington and Beijing — the world’s two biggest powers — on opposite sides of the largest assault on a European state since World War Two.
More than 320,000 Ukrainian citizens have returned to help their country fight since Russia began its invasion, according to the state border guard service of Ukraine. “The occupants thought they were going to Ukraine which they had seen before, in 2014-2015, which they corrupted and were not afraid of, but we are different now,” Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his latest address.
Russia has accused the West of stoking a wild Russophobic plot to tear Russia apart. “It will not work – Russia has the might to put all of our brash enemies in their place,” Dmitry Medvedev, who served as president from 2008 to 2012 and is now deputy secretary of Russia’s Security Council, said on Thursday.
The United Nations said it had recorded 2,032 civilian casualties so far in Ukraine – 780 killed and 1,252 injured. Some 3.2 million civilians, mostly women and children, have now fled to neighbouring countries, the UN said, with Poland becoming the largest concentration of Ukrainian refugees.
Bulgaria’s foreign ministry on Friday announced the expulsion of 10 Russian diplomats for breaching international conventions on diplomatic ties. The formulation used by the ministry is often used to designate espionage. Sofia expelled two Russian diplomats earlier this month for similar reasons.
Meanwhile, Russia’s request to freeze a FIFA ban on its soccer teams ahead of next week’s World Cup qualifying playoffs was denied on Friday. FIFA said the Court of Arbitration for Sport dismissed the Russian soccer federation’s bid for an urgent interim ruling to freeze the ban pending a full appeal, which could come within weeks. The latest ruling follows a similar CAS refusal on Tuesday to freeze UEFA’s ban on Russian national and club teams in European soccer.