From Reuters:
“Ukraine willing to be
neutral, says Russia wants to split nation”
(Ukraine's President Volodymyr
Zelenskiy attends an interview with some of the Russian media via videolink, as
Russia's attack on Ukraine continues, in Kyiv, Ukraine March 27, 2022.)
Ukraine is willing to become
neutral and compromise over the status of the eastern Donbass region as part of
a peace deal, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Sunday, even as another top
Ukrainian official accused Russia of aiming to carve the country in two. Zelenskiy
took his message directly to Russian journalists in a video call that the
Kremlin pre-emptively warned Russian media not to report, saying any agreement
must be guaranteed by third parties and put to a referendum "Security
guarantees and neutrality, non-nuclear status of our state. We are ready to go
for it," he said, speaking in Russian.
But even as Turkey is set to host
talks this week, Ukraine's head of military intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov, said
Russian President Vladimir Putin was aiming to seize 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 Two.
Zelenskiy has urged the West to give Ukraine tanks, planes and missiles to help
fend off Russian forces. In a call with Putin on Sunday, Turkish President
Tayyip Erdogan agreed to hold talks this week in Istanbul and called for a
ceasefire and better humanitarian conditions, his office said. Ukrainian and
Russian negotiators confirmed that in-person talks would take place. read more
Top American officials sought on
Sunday to clarify that the United States does not have a policy of regime
change in Russia, after President Joe Biden said at the end of a speech in
Poland on Saturday that Putin "cannot remain in power". U.S.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Biden had simply meant Putin could not
be "empowered to wage war" against Ukraine or anywhere else. After
more than four weeks of conflict, Russia has failed to seize any major
Ukrainian city and signalled on Friday it was scaling back its ambitions to
focus on securing the Donbass region, where Russian-backed separatists have
been fighting the Ukrainian army for the past eight years. A local leader in
the self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic said on Sunday the region could
soon hold a referendum on joining Russia, just as happened in Crimea after
Russia seized the Ukrainian peninsula in 2014. Crimeans voted overwhelmingly to
break with Ukraine and join Russia -- a vote that much of the world refused to
recognise. Budanov predicted Ukraine's army would repel Russian forces by
launching a guerrilla warfare offensive. "Then there will be one relevant
scenario left for the Russians, how to survive," he said. Ukraine's
foreign ministry spokesperson also dismissed talk of any referendum in eastern
Ukraine. "All fake referendums in the temporarily occupied territories are
null and void and will have no legal validity," Oleg Nikolenko told
Reuters. read more
'CRUEL AND SENSELESS' Moscow
says the goals for what Putin calls a "special military operation"
include demilitarising and "denazifying" its neighbour. Ukraine and
its Western allies call this a pretext for unprovoked invasion. Ukraine
has described previous negotiations, some of which have taken place in Russian
ally Belarus, as "very difficult". The invasion has devastated
several Ukrainian cities, caused a major humanitarian crisis and displaced an
estimated 10 million people, nearly a quarter of Ukraine's population. Tatyana
Manyek, who crossed the Danube by ferry into Romania on Sunday with other
refugees, said people in her home city of Odesa were "very afraid"
but she would have stayed were it not for her daughter. "It would be very
difficult to provide the child with basic living conditions. That's why we
decided to leave," she said, clutching a pet dog in her arms. In his
Sunday blessing, Pope Francis called for an end to the "cruel and
senseless" conflict. read more
CALL FOR WEAPONS Zelenskiy
demanded in a late-night television address on Saturday that Western nations
hand over military hardware that was "gathering dust" in stockpiles,
saying his nation needed just 1% of NATO's aircraft and 1% of its tanks. read
more Western nations have given Ukraine anti-tank and anti-aircraft
missiles as well as small arms and protective equipment, without offering heavy
armour or planes. Ukrainian Interior Ministry adviser Vadym Denysenko
said Russia had started destroying Ukrainian fuel and food storage centres.
Appearing to confirm that, Russia said its missiles had wrecked a fuel deposit
on Saturday as well as a military repair plant near the western city of Lviv. Ukraine was mounting small
counter-offensive actions as Russian forces try to encircle its forces in
eastern Ukraine, a Ukrainian presidential advisor said.
The United Nations has confirmed
1,119 civilian deaths and 1,790 injuries across Ukraine but says the real toll
is likely to be higher. Ukraine said on Sunday 139 children had been killed and
more than 205 wounded so far in the conflict. Ukraine and Russia agreed two
"humanitarian corridors" to evacuate civilians from frontline areas
on Sunday, including allowing people to leave by car from the southern city of
Mariupol, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said. The encircled
port, located between Crimea and eastern areas held by Russian-backed separatists,
has been devastated by weeks of heavy bombardment. Thousands of residents are
sheltering in basements with scarce water, food, medicine or power.
^ Ukraine continues to amaze the
world at how well it not only defends itself, but at how it is
counter-attacking against Russian-Occupied Territory. Ukraine is on the side of
right and just and clearly something higher also sees that and is helping them
against Putin. ^
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