Ukraine and Russia suspended negotiations to end the war as a row erupted over a possible prisoner exchange in the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol. Kyiv’s negotiator Mykhailo Podolyak said on Ukrainian television that progress could not be made in talks if Russia did not recognise the situation on the ground. Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, saying it wanted to “denazify” the country, to the bewilderment of the international community. Moscow has since seen a series of major setbacks in its military operation, but seems close to taking the port city of Mariupol. “To this day, they live in a world where there is supposedly a Ukrainian Nazism,” Podolyak said on Tuesday, adding there was only “Russian Nazism”. A ceasefire could be discussed only after a complete withdrawal of Russian troops, he said, with only a complete liberation of all occupied territories acceptable. Russia earlier confirmed the end of talks. “No, negotiations will not continue. Ukraine has practically left the negotiation process,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Rudenko told reporters. Ukraine ‘will get worse for us’, retired Russian colonel says on state TV The Kremlin has accused the West of waging a diplomatic, economic and political war on Russia. “They are enemy states. Because what they are doing is war,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. The head of the Russian parliament further fuelled mistrust as he spoke out against a prisoner exchange following the capture of Ukrainian fighters in Mariupol. “Nazi criminals are not subject to exchange. They are war criminals and we must do everything to bring them to justice,” Vyacheslav Volodin said during a plenary session. The Kremlin said Russian President Vladimir Putin had personally guaranteed the prisoners would be treated according to international standards. On Wednesday, Russia’s defence ministry said that 694 Ukrainian fighters holed up in Mariupol’s Azovstal steelworks had surrendered over the last 24 hours. Since Monday, 959 militants from Azovstal have surrendered, 80 of whom were wounded, RIA news agency reported citing the ministry. Ukraine hopes for an exchange of its soldiers who had left the besieged Azovstal steelworks. Some of the Ukrainian fighters in Mariupol belong to the far-right nationalist Azov regiment, seen by Moscow as a neo-Nazi unit. On Tuesday, Russia’s foreign ministry published a video showing the capture of some Ukrainians, medical treatment being administered and the injured being taken away. The soldiers were loaded onto buses and taken to two towns controlled by Moscow-backed separatists. Efforts to rescue the last remaining Ukrainian soldiers in Mariupol continue, according to Kyiv. President Volodymyr Zelensky said “the most influential international mediators are involved” in the plans. Hundreds of civilians were evacuated from the plant in recent days. Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman Lyudmyla Denisova said the Russian military was also holding more than 3,000 civilians from Mariupol at another former penal colony near Russian-controlled Olenivka. Burning munitions used on Mariupol’s Azovstal steel plant The detainees include about 30 volunteers who delivered humanitarian supplies to Mariupol while it was under siege, she said. With the fighters’ departures, Mariupol was on the verge of falling under complete Russian control. Its capture would be the biggest city to be taken by Moscow’s forces and would give the Kremlin a badly needed victory, though the landscape has largely been reduced to rubble. Meanwhile, British intelligence said Russian armed forces are increasingly relying on “indiscriminate artillery bombardment” of Ukraine and “an unwillingness to risk flying combat aircraft routinely beyond its own front lines”. Several buildings were attacked in the western Russian region of Kursk on the border with Ukraine, Kursk Governor Roman Starovoyt announced. This could not be independently verified. Seven civilians were killed in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region by Russian troops, the head of the local military administration said. At least 382 civilians have been killed and 1,096 injured in Donetsk alone since Russia’s invasion, according to Ukrainian figures. Russian troops killed in Ukraine were ‘young, poor, from minorities’ Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin visited Ukraine’s Kherson on Tuesday, and said the region would take a “worthy place in our Russian family”, RIA Novosti reported. His visit came days after the Russian-installed government in the Ukrainian province said it plans to appeal to Moscow for the right to become part of Russia. The developments in the war came as Sweden and Finland were on the verge of joining the western defence alliance Nato and the International Criminal Court (ICC) sent a team of 42 experts to Ukraine to investigate possible war crimes. Additional reporting by Reuters and Associated Press