Vladimir Putin says Ukraine advance ‘going to plan’; France warns ‘worst is yet to come’
- Ukraine says a second round of ceasefire talks with Russia has yielded agreement on humanitarian corridors to evacuate civilians
- The US sanctions Russian oligarchs in the latest ratcheting up of pressure on the Kremlin to halt its invasion
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Putin again said Russia was rooting out “neo-Nazis”, adding during the televised opening of a national security council meeting that he “will never give up on [his] conviction that Russians and Ukrainians are one people”.
He earlier told French President Emmanuel Macron that Moscow “intends to continue the uncompromising fight against militants of nationalist armed groups”, according to a Kremlin account of their call.
In Macron’s view, the worst is yet to come in Ukraine, the Elysee Palace said after the phone call, adding that it was now clear that Putin’s goal was the subjugation of the entire country.
A Ukrainian negotiator said on Thursday that a second round of ceasefire talks with Russia had not yielded the results Kyiv hoped for, but the sides had reached an understanding on creating humanitarian corridors to evacuate civilians.
Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said the two sides envisaged a possible temporary ceasefire to allow for the evacuation of civilians.
“That is, not everywhere, but only in those places where the humanitarian corridors themselves will be located, it will be possible to cease fire for the duration of the evacuation,” he said.
They had also reached an understanding on the delivery of medicines and food to the places where the fiercest fighting was taking place.
It was the first time the two sides had agreed any form of progress on any issue since Russia invaded Ukraine a week ago.
Podolyak said the outcome had fallen short of Kyiv’s hopes, however. “To our great regret, we did not get the results we were counting on,” he said, without elaborating.
“The only thing I can say is that we discussed the humanitarian aspect in sufficient detail, because quite a lot of cities are now surrounded. There is a dramatic situation with medicines, food, and evacuation,” Podolyak said.
02:29
Ukrainians recount destruction in Borodyanka after Russian shelling
Along with economic measures, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky has called on the West to up its military aid, after Nato members ruled out enforcing a no-fly zone for fear of igniting a direct war with nuclear-armed Russia.
“If you do not have the power to close the skies, then give me planes!” Zelensky told a news conference.
“If we are no more then, God forbid, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia will be next,” he said, adding that direct talks with Putin were “the only way to stop this war”.
The EU has offered fighter jets already, and a source in Berlin said the German government was planning to deliver another 2,700 anti-aircraft missiles to Ukraine. The 27-nation bloc agreed further to approve temporary protection for all refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine – numbered by the United Nations at more than 1 million.
The invasion, now in its eighth day, has turned Russia into a global pariah in the worlds of finance, diplomacy, sports and culture.
The US on Thursday imposed sanctions on the ultra-wealthy Russian oligarchs at the heart of Putin’s regime in the latest ratcheting up of pressure on the Kremlin to halt its invasion of Ukraine.
They and their family members “will be cut off from the US financial system, their assets in the United States will be frozen and their property will be blocked from use”, the White House said in a statement.
01:46
Residents of Kherson awake to Russian tanks as Moscow claims to have seized strategic city
The UN has opened a probe into alleged war crimes, as the Russian military bombards cities in Ukraine with shells and missiles, forcing civilians to cower in basements.
Thirty-three people died Thursday when Russian forces hit residential areas, including schools and a high-rise apartment block, in the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv, authorities said.
Zelensky claims thousands of Russian soldiers have been killed since Putin shocked the world by invading Ukraine, purportedly to demilitarise and “de-Nazify” a Western-leaning threat on his borders.
Moscow said Wednesday that it has lost 498 troops, and Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin praised their sacrifice.
While a long military column appears stalled north of Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, Russian troops seized Kherson, a Black Sea city of 290,000 people, after a three-day siege that left it short of food and medicine.
Russian armoured columns from Crimea – annexed by Moscow in 2014 – pushed deep into the region around Kherson, triggering fighting that left at least 13 civilians dead. Nine Ukrainian soldiers were also killed, the Kherson regional administration said.
Russian troops are also besieging the port city of Mariupol east of Kherson, which is without water or electricity in the depths of winter.
“They are trying to create a blockade here, just like in Leningrad,” Mariupol mayor Vadym Boichenko said, referring to the brutal Nazi siege of Russia’s second city, now renamed St Petersburg.
Ukrainian authorities said residential and other areas in the eastern city of Kharkiv had been “pounded all night” by indiscriminate shelling, which UN prosecutors are investigating as a possible war crime.
Russian authorities have imposed a media blackout on what the Kremlin euphemistically calls a “special military operation” that Western analysts say has become bogged down.
But Russians have still turned out for large anti-war protests across the country, braving mass arrests in a direct challenge to the president’s 20-year rule. Nearly 7,000 Russian scientists, mathematicians and academics had as of Thursday signed an open letter “strongly” protesting Putin’s war in Ukraine.
Russian oil giant Lukoil on Thursday called for an immediate halt to fighting in Ukraine, one of the first major domestic firms to speak out against the invasion.
Additional reporting by Reuters and dpa
