প্রকাশ: 29/03/2022
Another round of talks aimed at stopping the war in Ukraine
is scheduled for Tuesday as the fighting looks increasingly like a stalemate on
the ground, with the two sides trading control of a town in the east and a
suburb of the capital.
Ukrainian forces retook Irpin, northwest of Kyviv, from
Russian troops, who were regrouping to take the area back, President Volodymyr
Zelenskyy said late Monday as he sought to rally the country.
“We still have to fight, we have to endure,” Zelenskyy said
in his nighttime video address to the nation. “We can’t express our emotions now.
We can’t raise expectations, simply so that we don’t burn out.”
Ahead of the talks, to be held in Istanbul, the Ukrainian
president said his country is prepared to declare its neutrality, as Moscow has
demanded, and is open to compromise on the fate of the Donbas, the contested
region in the country’s east.
As fighting raged throughout the country, the mayor of
Irpin, which has been the scene of some of the heaviest fighting, said that the
city had been “liberated” from Russian forces.
A senior U.S. defense official said the U.S. believes the
Ukrainians have also retaken the town of Trostyanets, south of Sumy, in the
east.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss
U.S. intelligence assessments, said Russian forces largely remained in defensive
positions near the capital, Kyiv, and were making little forward progress
elsewhere in the country.
The official said Russia appeared to be de-emphasizing
ground operations near Kyiv and concentrating more on the Donbas, the
predominantly Russian-speaking region where Moscow-backed rebels have been
waging a separatist war for the past eight years.
Late last week, with its forces bogged down in parts of the
country, Russia seemed to scale back its war aims, saying its main goal was
gaining control of the Donbas.
While that suggested a possible face-saving exit strategy
for Russian President Vladimir Putin, it also raised Ukrainian fears that the
Kremlin intends to split the country in two and force it to surrender a swath
of its territory.
Meanwhile, a cyberattack knocked Ukraine’s national
telecommunications provider Ukrtelecom almost completely offline. The chief of
Ukraine’s state service for special communication, Yurii Shchyhol, blamed “the
enemy” without specifically naming Russia and said most customers were cut off
from telephone, internet and mobile service so that coverage could continue for
Ukraine’s military.
Also Monday, an oil depot in western Ukraine’s Rivne region
was hit by a missile attack, the governor said. It was the second attack on oil
facilities in the region near the Polish border.
In recent days, Ukrainian troops have pushed the Russians
back in other sectors.
In the city of Makariv, near a strategic highway west of the
capital, Associated Press reporters saw the carcass of a Russian rocket
launcher, a burned Russian truck, the body of a Russian soldier and a destroyed
Ukrainian tank after fighting there a few days ago.
In the nearby village of Yasnohorodka, the AP witnessed
positions abandoned by Ukrainian soldiers who had moved farther west, but no
sign of Russian troops.
And on Friday, the U.S. defense official said the Russians
were no longer in full control of Kherson, the first major city to fall to
Moscow’s forces. The Kremlin denied it had lost full control of the southern
city.
Russia has long demanded that Ukraine drop any hope of
joining NATO, which Moscow sees as a threat. Zelenskyy, for his part, has
stressed that Ukraine needs security guarantees of its own as part of any deal.
Over the weekend, Zelenskyy said he is ready to agree to
neutrality. He also said that “Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity
are beyond doubt,” while suggesting at the same time that compromise might be
possible over “the complex issue of Donbas.”
The Ukrainian leader has suggested as much before but rarely
commented so extensively. That could create momentum for the talks, for which
the Russian delegates arrived in Istanbul on Monday, Turkish media reported.
Still, it was not clear how a compromise on the Donbas would
square with maintaining Ukraine’s territorial integrity.
In other developments:
— President Joe Biden made no apologies for calling for
Putin’s ouster, saying he was expressing his “moral outrage,” not a new U.S.
policy. Over the weekend, Biden said, “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain
in power.” On Monday, the president said: “I’m not walking anything back.”
— U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he has
launched an effort to achieve a humanitarian cease-fire that would allow aid to
be brought in and people to move around safely.
— Russia’s invasion has most Americans at least somewhat
worried that the U.S. will be drawn directly into the conflict and could be
targeted with nuclear weapons, according to a poll from The Associated
Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
— T he Group of Seven major economies rejected a Kremlin
demand that some countries pay in rubles for Russia’s natural gas. That demand
appeared designed to support the Russian currency, which is under pressure from
Western sanctions.
Earlier talks, both by video and in person, have failed to
make progress on ending the more than month-old war that has killed thousands
and driven more than 10 million Ukrainians from their homes. That includes
almost 4 million who have fled the country.
In the besieged southern port of Mariupol, the mayor said
half the pre-war population of more than 400,000 has fled, often under fire,
during weeks of shooting and shelling.
Alina Beskrovna, who escaped the city in a convoy of cars
and made it to Poland, said desperate people are melting snow for water and
cooking on open fires despite the risk of bombardment, “because if you don’t,
you will have nothing to eat.”
“A lot of people are just, I think, starving to death in
their apartments right now with no help,” she said. “It’s a mass murder that’s
happening at the hands of the Russians.”
Putin’s ground forces have become bogged down because of
stronger-than-expected Ukrainian resistance, combined with what Western
officials say are Russian tactical missteps, poor morale, shortages of food,
fuel and cold weather gear, and other problems. Moscow has resorted to
pummeling Ukrainian cities with artillery and airstrikes.
In Stoyanka village near Kyiv, Ukrainian soldier Serhiy Udod
said Russian troops had taken up defensive positions and suffered heavy losses.
The Russians probably “thought it would be like Crimea,”
which the Kremlin annexed in 2014. “But here it’s not like in Crimea. We are
not happy to see them. Here they suffer and get killed.”
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